Sycamore Partners is not the new owner
It seemed over the summer that another American investor, Sycamore Partners, would become Hunkemöller’s new owner for a sum of about 440 million euro. Hunkemöller CEO Philip Mountford denied, at the start of September, that it was a done deal.
Now it appears Carlyle Group, another American investment fund, pipped Sycamore Partners to the chain. It is not clear how much the new owner paid for the number one in the Benelux lingerie market.
Dutch Hunkemöller has been around for nearly 130 years. Wilhelm Anton Caspar Hunkemöller and his wife Josephina Lexis opened the very first store in 1886 in Amsterdam and it has now become one of Europe’s largest lingerie store chains, with more than 700 stores worldwide.
Carlyle Group has also earned its stripes in the fashion world: it increased its stake in Italian fashion chain Twin Set to 90 % earlier this year.
