Prada Clan Succession Plan Bolstered by Versace Deal

For decades, the fiercely independent Prada chairman Patrizio Bertelli talked about the need for Italian fashion houses to acquire size and scale to take on sprawling industry behemoths like LVMH and Kering and also avoid being gobbled up by them.

- BLOOMBERG

And yet his efforts to add heft to the Milan-based company he controls with his wife Miuccia Prada through an acquisition binge in the late 1990s left the group saddled with more than €1 billion ($1.13 billion) in debt and later forced the couple to seek help from Italian banks to prevent losing control.

More than a quarter century on, the family—including the couple's oldest son Lorenzo, Bertelli's designated successor—is seeking a different outcome from the biggest acquisition in Prada's 112-year history: Versace.