Dainese cambia proprietà: ceduta per 1 euro ai fondi —According to the headlines in Sport Finanza, Il Messaggero and a host of other Italian media outlets, the historic Dainese brand was sold for the symbolic price of 1 Euro as the investment fund that owned it has collapsed. The Dainese deal includes its AGV Helmets and TCX boots holdings.
The Carlyle investment fund, which acquired control of the company back in 2022 for a reported €630 million from Investcorp, has decided to sell its majority stake in the group for the symbolic sum of €1 (plus the €300 million debt they have racked up). The new buyers? More VCs — namely Arcmont Asset Management (London) and HPS Investment Partners, the latter recently acquired by BlackRock. Both just happen to be Dainese’s main creditors.
The news, reported by Il Messaggero, comes amid a complex financial restructuring necessary to save Dainese from a potential default. The Vicenza-based group has accumulated approximately €300 million in debt, equivalent to 15 times its EBITDA (estimated at around €20 million), an unsustainable level compared to industry standards, which limit it to a maximum of 3-3.5 times.
This is a far cry from 2015 when Bahrain-based Investcorp acquired the iconic brand from founder Lino Dainese for €130M. Dainese’s debt worsened in recent years, culminating in 2024, when the company closed the year with a net loss of 120 million euros, almost triple the previous year. According to Il Messaggero several factors contributed to this: goodwill write-downs of 86 million euros, a contraction in demand, especially in Asian markets, and an unfavorable macroeconomic environment characterized by high interest rates, inventories accumulated during the two-year pandemic, and declining consumption.
“Despite a €15 million liquidity injection by Carlyle at the end of 2024 to avoid breaching banking covenants, signs of crisis were already evident: the postponement of a bond coupon payment scheduled for early July was a key indicator,” concludes Sport Finanza.
