German car parts seller Autodoc puts IPO on hold
In a statement, Autodoc added that an IPO at a later time remained under consideration by the company and shareholders, without saying why the IPO was postponed.
The planned transaction would have seen the sale of existing shares worth as much as 390 million euro ($453.18 million), for a total equity value of the company of as much as 2.3 billion, with the first day of trading scheduled for Wednesday.
The risk of global trade disputes over tariffs has led to the suspension of a number of listings and the military conflict between Israel and Iran has further added to the market volatility.
Metals investor Cobalt Holdings earlier this month suspended London IPO plans, declining to specify the reasons. That was after Germany's 1Komma5 Grad, a renewable-energy systems provider, and Swedish fintech Klarna in April put U.S. listing plans on hold.
In March, German pharmaceuticals company Stada postponed an IPO in Frankfurt.
($1 = 0.8606 euros)
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Claire's was glitz 'heaven' for kids before Shein and TikTok came along
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Times
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Anyone with their eye on the fashion world's transfer window will know that luxury houses are trading creative directors and parachuting in new design teams at an unprecedented pace. This September at least five of the world's most prestigious fashion brands will unveil collections under newly recruited designers, who, charged with dreaming up a bestselling handbag or two, are weighed down under the pressure. Max Mara's Ian Griffiths sits apart from all that. Having recently marked 37 years of service at the Italian brand that is globally renowned for its baby-hair-soft camel coats, Griffiths is a unicorn of sorts. He began at the company in 1987 and has never looked back. 'There was no such thing as 'creative director' in those days,' says the 57-year-old, who began as a junior on the design team. Griffiths got the role after winning a competition, which he entered while studying at the Royal College of Art in London. 'They offered me a job for life,' he says. Nearly four decades later he finds it difficult to remember much before he took on the role. 'I've been with Max Mara more than half my life and exactly half of its life, so we are pretty tied up with each other.' Sharing such levels of intimacy with a house and its customers is almost unheard of for most designers today. 'I don't envy these guys at all,' Griffiths says. 'They would probably all laugh at the fact that I had nearly 20 years to think about what Max Mara was before I had to make important decisions about where it would go. They are turning up and being expected to take a brand in a radically different direction in the first season. More importantly, they are expected to produce instant results. From this perspective I wonder what happens to a brand's heritage and identity when it's been passed through three or four or five different hands. Heritage is so difficult to acquire and so easy to lose.' • Read more fashion advice and style inspiration from our experts For Griffiths, who can talk in astounding detail about shades of camel ('an inexhaustible subject', he says) and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Italian culture and its impact on the way the world gets dressed, the gift has been to evolve with the Max Mara Group, which has grown from a ready-to-wear line to a multifaceted business spanning some 35 different labels during his tenure. It helps that he still seems to really enjoy his job — whether he's staging a star-studded catwalk show, as he is the day after we meet, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Alexa Chung among those on the guest list for his latest Cruise spectacular — or beavering away with his design team. 'I enjoy the rainy afternoons in the office as much as I do the big moments,' he says. 'It still seems to me as small and villagey as it was when I first joined.' He has never lost sight of the fact that Max Mara will always be bigger than he is. While the way in fashion is to shout about the big designer signing, Max Mara — a family business founded by Achille Maramotti in 1951, now with a group revenue estimated at between €1.5 billion (£1.3 billion) and €1.9 billion a year — would rather you were more interested in its products than the people behind them. 'Someone once described me as the most famous designer you've never heard of. I don't think I'll ever get rid of that,' he says. He may not be a fan of that tagline, but it suits him. His Max Mara is a globally recognised phenomenon that has rewritten the rule book for women and power dressing more times than it is given credit for. 'Women couldn't wear trousers to work when I first joined,' he says. 'Max Mara formulated power dressing. Now we're helping women break down those dress codes as they demand more freedom from their clothes.' 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'As a teenager I could think of little more enjoyable than spending an afternoon putting myself in an outfit. I once made myself an outfit out of some gold curtains my mum was throwing away. I always loved fashion.' He started designing clothes for other people when, having dropped out of an architecture course at Manchester University, he set up a stall at the nearby Butter Lane Antiques Market. Acting as his own brand ambassador, he would wear his designs to go clubbing. 'People would give me £30 and say, 'Would you make me one for next Saturday?' That was my first experience of the clothing business.' This early business insight, along with the creative training he received on the MA course at the Royal College of Art in London, has allowed Griffiths a generous design aesthetic that is very much motivated by making women feel like the best versions of themselves. Certainly he is sympathetic to their cause. 'Women face, I think, the most barbaric criticism for every decision that they make. With choices come more decisions and more to be criticised for. 'There's so much fashion that makes people feel bad about themselves. We've always tried to do fashion that makes people feel good about themselves.' With the exception, perhaps, of its now iconic teddy coat — a supersized faux fur that has spawned a thousand paparazzi shots — Max Mara isn't a brand you use to make a big fashion statement, and that's just how the design team wants it. 'Clothes should be a frame for the person wearing them. The person shines, the frame doesn't budge. The person is never overpowered by the clothes.' Max Mara's signature camel coat, a garment that has been with the company since its early years, is a fitting example of the framework Griffiths is describing. 'The whole thing has come full circle now, but its masculine shape must have been quite shocking back when Max Mara first started making them in the Sixties,' he says. 'The idea of taking a menswear classic, with all of its symbols of male prestige and power, really was a daring act.' The simplicity of Italian style — 'easy to wear, elegant, unfussy' — has always been a point of interest for him. His passion is movies, with every collection he works on peppered with references to the style of Marlene Dietrich or Rita Hayworth. Or, in the instance of the Cruise collection we are here to discuss, Silvana Mangano, who starred in the 1949 film Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) and inspired the tiny shorts-and-wader combo he will unveil on the runway. Griffiths has a remarkable grasp on what he describes as 'Italianness' ('There's no better word for it. Believe me, I've spent years trying to come up with one,' he says). 'I do look at myself and laugh, because I've become a caricature in a way. I am an Italian person's idea of a British person,' he says. 'Ridiculously so.' But the outsider perspective has served him well. 'It's easier to be objective. For a time, being British enabled me to inject a little bit of eccentricity into Max Mara. Italian [style] is a lot freer now.' For the first 25 years of his career Griffiths lived at a hotel the company owned near its HQ in Reggio Emilia, near Milan. 'I was in complete denial. I was so connected to London. I lived in London in my head. That's where my home was,' he says. But things have changed. 'Someone asked me the other evening where I was from and I really didn't know how to answer. I am from the UK, obviously, but since Brexit I am a resident of Reggio Emilia in Italy. The draw of coming back to my cottage in Suffolk is becoming less strong. I don't feel as at home there as I used to.' • Stars out for Max Mara show that offers light touch in the heat Now, in the midst of purchasing a home in Lunigiana, Tuscany, Griffiths's trips back to the UK are to visit his mother. His biggest fan 'and critic', he says — she is a regular at his fashion shows, attending in person, and virtually when she can't make the journey. 'At our show in Venice last year we facetimed her from backstage; all the models were passing my phone around. Mum was in her dressing gown with rollers in and no make-up on. When she realised everyone could see her, she was furious.' Is she a Max Mara woman? 'Oh yes,' Griffiths says. 'Various things have come her way over the years.' Like most of his customers, she is holding on tight to her favourite pieces. 'You don't find Max Mara in vintage stores,' Griffiths says, 'because people hang on to it. The clothes don't have a shelf life. We deal in simplicity and in classics that stand the test of time.' If it ain't broke … @karendacre
