ESCADA MAY HAVE A BUYER

Now Italy’s Borletti Group (the group was recently in the running to buy Christian Lacroix and was considered to have the most serious bid until Hassan bin Ali al-Nuaimi stunned the fashion work with a $70 million bid), is working on a bid for the iconic German label. Borletti insists that he isn’t making a bid for Escada, but rather that the Borletti Group is in contact with one of the bidders who asked the group for support in preparing his bid. If the bid goes through, they would consider it “a small investment.”

Maurizio Borletti, chairman of Printemps Holding, which controls France’s Printemps and La Rinascente in Italy, isn’t the only one involved in the Escada bidding. There are unbinding offers from six parties on the table, and binding offers are expected from these with possibly a seventh next week. An agreement is expected to be reached by the first week of November. Among the rumored interested parties are Vestar Capital Partners, the owner of St. John Knits, and Sven Ley, the son of Escada founders Wolfgang and Margaretha Ley.