Italian luxury fashion house Prada yesterday made a lackluster stock market debut in Hong Kong amid choppy global markets and waning investor interest after a string of blockbuster initial public offerings (IPO).
The family-controlled firm’s stock opened just 0.25 percent higher at HK$39.60 compared with its IPO price of HK$39.50.
After a little bit of intraday movement, it ended the session where it started at HK$39.60, while Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index rose 1.9 percent.
Photo: AFP
The Milan-based company nevertheless trumpeted its listing debut in Hong Kong — increasingly a favored gateway for foreign companies trying to tap Chinese capital.
“We are the first Italian luxury brand company to list here and this is a landmark event for the Hong Kong stock exchange,” chief executive Patrizio Bertelli said.
“I am positive the Greater China market will be an interesting market for luxury good brands. The first signs are very good,” he told reporters.
Hong Kong Stock Exchange chairman Ronald Arculli lauded the listing as a “good start” for Prada and said the exchange was doing its best to attract quality companies to list in the territory, despite volatile global markets.
The Italian group, which includes the Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s and Car Shoe brands, is the latest high-end fashion brand to tap the huge Chinese market, the world’s fastest-growing market for luxury goods.
However, weak market sentiment had pushed Prada to price its Hong Kong shares at the lower end of its price range and shrink the size of its highly anticipated IPO, raising a lower-than-expected US$2.14 billion.
Prada sold 423.2 million shares after floating 20 percent of its stock. Before the IPO, the brand had been 95 percent owned by the Prada family and executives.
Outside the stock exchange, Prada received some unwanted publicity when two dozen women’s activists staged a protest accusing the group of sexual discrimination and chanted “Only the devil wears Prada! Shame on Prada!”
The protest stemmed from the case of Rina Bovrisse, a 37-year-old former Prada manager in Japan who claimed she was unfairly fired in March last year after being told by a company executive that she was “ugly” and didn’t have “the Prada look.”
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
OPTION: Uber said it could provide higher pay for batch trips, if incentives for batching is not removed entirely, as the latter would force it to pass on the costs to consumers Uber Technologies Inc yesterday warned that proposed restrictions on batching orders and minimum wages could prompt a NT$20 delivery fee increase in Taiwan, as lower efficiency would drive up costs. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made the remarks yesterday during his visit to Taiwan. He is on a multileg trip to the region, which includes stops in South Korea and Japan. His visit coincided the release last month of the Ministry of Labor’s draft bill on the delivery sector, which aims to safeguard delivery workers’ rights and improve their welfare. The ministry set the minimum pay for local food delivery drivers at
RSS