Kathmandu Said to Plan Share Sale as Early as October

Kathmandu Said to Plan Share Sale as Early as October
Bloomberg, 22-Sep-09
By Angus Whitley

Kathmandu, the outdoor equipment retailer with shops across New Zealand and Australia, may sell shares in an initial public offering as early as next month, two people familiar with the matter said.

The Christchurch-based company, jointly owned by Goldman Sachs JBWere Pty and Quadrant Private Equity, will probably decide within two weeks whether to proceed with the sale, the people said, declining to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The IPO may raise about A$400 million ($345 million), based on preliminary estimates, one of the people said.

Kathumandu’s sale would follow that of Myer Group Pty, Australia’s largest department store operator, which plans to file for an IPO next week. The two retailers are among at least four private equity-controlled businesses that may go public in coming months to tap a cash surplus among local investors that Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates at about A$200 billion.

Macquarie Group Ltd., Australia’s largest investment bank, and Goldman Sachs JBWere have been hired as advisers, the people said. Hayley Morris, a spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs JBWere in Sydney, and Chris Hadley, Quadrant’s managing director and a Kathmandu director, didn’t return phone calls seeking comment. Paula Hannaford, a Macquarie spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Kathmandu declined to comment, it said in an e-mailed statement.

Goldman Sachs JBWere and Quadrant led the leveraged buyout of Kathmandu for NZ$275 million ($195 million) in April 2006. In September that year, the firms bought the remaining 49 percent stake from Jan Cameron, who founded the retailer in 1987.

Camping Equipment

Kathmandu has more than 80 stores in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., according to its Web site. The company’s products include own-branded backpacks, jackets, sleeping bags and camping equipment.

The sale may take place in late October or early November, within about a week of the Myer listing, and Kathmandu’s owners haven’t decided how much of the business to sell, the people said. The company, which also has an office in Melbourne, may opt for a dual listing in Australia and New Zealand, one of the people said.

Australian companies, most of them retailers, may announce more than A$10 billion of initial share sales by June, UBS AG, the biggest arranger of stock offerings in Australia since 2006, said this month. IPOs in the nation raised a combined A$674 million so far this year, according to the stock exchange.

Melbourne-based Myer said this month it plans to lodge an IPO prospectus on Sept. 28. The company, part-owned by Texas- based TPG Inc., may raise at least A$2 billion, according to Tribeca Investment Partners in Sydney, making it Australia’s largest offering since 2007.

Forty-five companies went public in the 12 months ended June 30, according to the operator of Australia’s stock exchange. That was the smallest number since 1993 and marked an 81 percent drop from a year earlier.

NYT Fashion Week Review: Prabal Gurung

The First Few Strides Are Looking Good
New York Times, 12-Sep-09
By CATHY HORYN

Fashion is such a complete world, wrapped in its own myths, that if the industry is in a bad state, nobody really notices. What you notice instead is someone’s shoes.

My, my: where did she get those? The fashionista’s long legs, exiting a cab on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street, setting off a wail of honking (why hurry?) were extended by her super-size, strappy heels, probably a Givenchy model. Killer.

That’s the way it was Thursday and Friday, the opening days of the spring 2010 shows: a dozen little back-to-school wardrobe crushes. There were also some good collections.

Prabal Gurung, a relatively new designer — he spent five years at Bill Blass before he set out on his own last winter — makes sophisticated clothes. He is aware of fit. He can set a proper sleeve. He has good connections with fabric mills, which will sell him small amounts. He makes everything count.

“When I started this collection, I thought, ‘What can I do to get people to buy my clothes? ” said Mr. Gurung, a native of Nepal. That’s a worthwhile question today. Why buy a $3,000 trench-coat dress in khaki double-face silk when you can buy the look for a lot less elsewhere?

Mr. Gurung’s answer is to create clothes that aren’t really about a one-dimensional look. That’s fine for an androgynous-looking label like Wayne.

On Thursday in a stripped-down loft in Chelsea, with a D.J. playing, the designer, Wayne Lee, presented a skinny silhouette of draped jersey T-shirt dresses, leggings split at the knees and gauzy minis that looked tied on the body. At some point the cement grays and whites blurred into the background, the low sky over the Hudson. Did the hard-edged clothes look familiar? A little.

Mr. Gurung knows he has to do something particular, with more depth, if he wants to stand out. If his first collection, shown last February, emphasized tailoring, this one displayed his skills at draping. Also, Mr. Gurung has added a few sportswear looks: slim trousers with diagonal seams or ribbon ties at the ankles, sleeveless silk jackets.

The most interesting dresses were a crisscross of fabric, fitted but not tight and more suggestive of pretty packaging than bondage. A cocktail dress in deep royal blue silk had a doughnut swirl of fabric on one shoulder. From a single piece of fabric, he worked a flat bow into the lapel of a cream pantsuit. There was a too-much-ness to everything that made for a nicely twisted sensibility.

Have you ever become completely irritated by a box of chocolate? You know the kind: concept chocolate, artfully arranged in a just-so box, flavors exotic and trying. I’m afraid that was my overall reaction to Jason Wu’s collection on Friday at the St. Regis Hotel.

Mr. Wu has a pretty good eye for color and prints. This season he plays with broken-wave prints (he called them Rorschach prints in his show notes) and some silk or denim tweeds with the small-grid pattern of industrial screens. For some reason I liked the idea of a slim, hooded tracksuit in dark tweed. It’s wearable and, at the same time, just a little out of it. A tweed mini-sheath with whorls of staple-like embroidery was lovely.

But a banality creeps into the picture. Whereas Mr. Gurung manages to take lightly the notion of feminine packaging, Mr. Wu treats it with a prissiness. Waists are defined and ribbon-tied. There are peplums aplenty. You suspect that Mr. Wu, like many designers, has spent a few hours gazing at the play clothes of Claire McCardell. Yet his cuffed shorts look unplayful and certainly not original. Though he tries.

He should try a little less hard is the answer. Not everything in life is a spotless decorator interior or a magazine spread. He should loosen up a bit. And why the uniformly short hemlines, six inches above the knee? That in itself is the sign of a fairly conformist outlook.

The scene at Elie Tahari’s presentation on Thursday felt like an industry cocktail gathering. The GQ guys are here! The models kept whisking past, on a continuous loop. (“Every seven minutes,” Mr. Tahari said.) There were little things to eat. The clothes were perfectly comprehensible: softly draped dresses and sarong skirts, smart-looking linen shorts and a trim jacket, blasts of orange silk, and a tailored denim shirt with a lovely starchiness.

Then it was out onto 42nd Street toward the wailing taxis and Ms. Hot Shoes.

Saleways slapped Rs 114 million in VAT fine

Saleways slapped Rs 114 million in VAT fine
myrepublica, 9-Sep-09
MILAN MANI SHARMA

Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has slapped value added tax (VAT) and penalty of Rs 114 million to Saleways Departmental Store after its investigation proved the store of evading tax in a large scale.

The company had not issued VAT bill and had not paid VAT even after collecting the tax from the customers, a source told myrepublica.com. "The evasion amount actually stood at Rs 57 million. The overall figure touched Rs 114 million due to fine and penalty," he stated.

This has made Saleways the largest ever case of VAT evasion unearthed by the department so far.

The department had initiated investigation against the departmental store after executing a smooth raid on the basis of information provided by an insider two months ago. It had seized its books of accounts, computers and other documents.

The investigation had started with Saleways sales store in Kathmandu. But when the investigating officers dug out its exclusively hidden procurement and sales records, they had extended the investigation to the store´s main outlet in Pokhara as well.

"We managed to conduct the first ever comprehensive study on how the trader manipulated his book of accounts and electronic entries to evade the taxes," said a source.

However, despite repeated calls from the IRD, the promoter of Saleways did not show up at the department to collect the penalty notice and the letter on Tuesday. "We will wait till 2 pm on Wednesday. If he still did not turn up, we will personally deliver the letter to the store at around 3 pm," said the source.

Sudhir Pradhananga of Saleways, meanwhile, said that he has not received any letter or notification from IRD so far. "We will decide on our future action once we get the letter," he stated.