Hilfiger joins Phillips-Van Heusen17: 31 15/03/2010, Andrew Clark, business, fashion, fashion designers, guardian.co.uk, lifestyle, mergers and acquis

Hilfiger joins Phillips-Van Heusen17: 31 15/03/2010, Andrew Clark, business, fashion, fashion designers, guardian.co.uk, lifestyle, mergers and acquisitions news, industry news to by lowest in the world, Guardian Unlimited

The clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger bought by the owner of Calvin Klein
Founder remains as principal designer and visionary "

Once known as "bling" brand beloved of the stars of the music, clothing preppy all American label Tommy Hilfiger joins the same company stability clothing designer Calvin Klein, through a € 2.2bn (£ 2 million dollars) for acquiring New York-based fashion group Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH).

In an agreement reached today, PVH Hilfiger agreed to buy the venture capital firm Apax Partners, which has presided over a successful change of the company he bought in 2006.

Eponym of the Tommy Hilfiger brand, will continue as principal designer and visionary "in the ownership of HPV, which has a portfolio that stretches from Van Heusen shirts starch formal lines of advertising for Calvin Klein underwear raunchily.

"Marks mega-iconic Calvin and Tommy are global," said the chairman of PVH, Emanuel Chirico. "We hope the two of them in our portfolio to really drive growth."

Under terms of the agreement, PVH will deliver € 1.9bn in cash and stock for € 276m Hilfiger headquarters in Amsterdam, giving a healthy return on Apax € 1.2bn it paid for the business in 2006 when the label was struggling with declining sales and lack of fashion mojo after losing contact with their "tight" roots.

The mooring is designed to be complementary in terms of geography. Annual sales of Calvin Klein's $ 5.8bn (£ 3.85bn) is heavily weighted towards the U.S., while Hilfiger $ 4.5bn of income is tilted towards Europe and Asia. HPV want to use the distribution network to disseminate Hilfiger international recognition of their brands.

Hilfiger, Fred Gehring, CEO, said the use of its label of U.S. flag and its close association with American values has been "particularly attractive in many emerging markets.

The acquisition is a new chapter in a turbulent history since Irish-American designer Tommy Hilfiger started the label in 1985. One of nine children of a city in upstate New York, his initial goal was to bring urban fashion look of London and Manhattan to the smaller communities.

Hilfiger expanded with close ties to the music industry and enjoy the popularity of hip-hop stars in the 1990s, including Snoop Dogg. But the brand lost its way towards the end of the decade. Gehring said he had become "over-licensed and over-exposed" and strayed too far from your area "preppy" shirts, cotton pants and jeans.

In the past four years, Apax has built Hilfiger by opening stores in Europe and Asia, while reaching a retail distribution deal with Macy's to put in a stronger position in the U.S.. Hilfiger has recently opened a store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and now has 1,000 outlets, making a profit of € 270 million in the year to March.

Hilfiger remains a high profile person in the world of fashion. It reached an agreement with Sony BMG to present a series of pop concerts streamed online on a channel called TommyTV, with artists such as Wyclef Jean and Beyoncé in an effort to attract younger buyers. The employer made headlines in 2006 for participating in a fight with Axl Rose, the leader of Guns N 'Roses in the VIP area of a nightclub in New York.

Chris Kim, an analyst at JP Morgan in New York, told Bloomberg News that the acquisition makes sense for HPV to help the company build its U.S. fashion brands in Europe: "HPV could expand some of its brands in Europe, in the case of Arrow and Van Heusen and Izod, where they have essentially no exposure."

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