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Caution kills the Golden Goose IPO

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Caution kills the Golden Goose IPO

Even association with Taylor Swift couldn’t save Golden Goose’s IPO.

The Italian company, known for its high-end, distressed sneakers, today shocked the market by announcing the withdrawal of its nearly €600mn flotation in Milan.

This offering seemingly had everything going for it: star power, fashion appeal, exceptional financial performance, and a €100m cornerstone order from Invesco. The IPO was touted as one of the highlights of 2024.

It got off to a brisk start. The offering was covered throughout the range within the first hour of bookbuilding. Syndicate bankers talked up the “number of quality, long-only international investors” prepared to anchor the transaction. And all this was happening against a backdrop of excellent European IPO performance, with shares in microcomputer maker Raspberry Pi rising nearly 50 per cent since its London debut last week.

Despite these promising signs, the IPO faced a stark reality: the order book lacked demand from fundamental, “long-only” institutions. And Golden Goose’s controlling shareholder Permira couldn’t afford another capital markets turkey after the London flotation of Doc Martens.

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The first sign that something was amiss came when the price range was announced last week. Briefed by deal participants, the financial media had talked about a €3 billion enterprise value, implying an equity value north of €2.5bn after deducting net debt, and in any case a substantial premium to Italian jacket maker Moncler.

Yet the market cap implied by the price range was €1.69-1.86bn, which came in “below expectations” and amounted to a 25-30 per cent discount to Moncler’s multiples. Then yesterday morning, the syndicate banks told investors that the IPO would price near the bottom of the range at €9.75 per share.

The seven (!) IPO bookrunners sought to reassure the market, insisting that the offering had been multiple times oversubscribed at and above that level. There is absolutely no reason to doubt the veracity of that statement. But there’s every reason to ask what this “market colour” actually means: it’s obvious a lot of that demand consisted of puffed-up orders from long-short hedge funds who play the new issue calendar, along with a smattering of interest from family offices and private banking accounts. Except for Invesco, the book was bloated with empty carbohydrates and was lacking in protein.

Why was the deal such a slog? Golden Goose’s flotation faced headwinds from the 3Ms: (Doc) Martens, midcap, and Macron.

One of the perennial debates in the capital markets is whether sellers are penalised if they stuff investors on a previous deal. The conventional answer is no: Memories are short, attractive opportunities can be too good to miss, and investors are paid to make money, not rake over the past. A good example involves the recent flotation success by buyout firm CVC.

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Weeks before it went public, investors had been jammed with stock in the Frankfurt IPO of CVC-backed perfumer retailer Douglas, only for the share price to plummet. But investors flocked to CVC’s own IPO in Amsterdam, and virtually nobody mentioned Douglas. The reason is that CVC was seen as a best-in-class asset and the price range was pitched at a substantial discount to its peers.

Permira was not let off the hook quite so easily. According to several investors and bankers, some fund managers demanded a “Permira discount” to reflect its mixed reputation in the capital markets. Although the banks probably soft-pedalled the investor feedback, the Permira team must have known that its performance history was an issue with the buyside.

Like a lot of private equity houses, Permira has an uneven track record with European IPOs.

When it floated German software company TeamViewer in 2019 and Polish e-commerce firm Allegro in 2020, shares in both companies performed well for a while, although they are both well below their IPO price today.

However, it is the collapse in the share price of another Permira-owned footwear company, the UK’s Doc Martens, that cast a shadow over Golden Goose’s flotation. Permira sold around a third of Doc Martens in early 2021 in a heavily oversubscribed stock market debut, and the stocks urged and indeed stayed above IPO price for almost a year — long enough for Permira to sella nother 7 percent in early 2022.

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All in all, Permira was able to take £1.26bn off the table. But since then Doc Martens has issued five profit warnings, causing the London-listed shares to tumble over 80 per cent from their initial offer price.

It was particularly unfortunate that Doc Martens halved its dividend and announced a big fall in earnings on the same day that Golden Goose announced its intention to float.

Against that backdrop, Golden Goose wasn’t an attractive enough company for investors to cut Permira much slack. It is perceived as an pretty good — but not a must-own — asset: several investors cited, for example, fashion risk and product concentration, along with its small size and niche market position, as key concerns, and stock would be a midcap in Milan, with limited liquidity in the after-market.

And this leads to the next issue for European flotations: midcap IPOs have less margin for error. Investors have seen how volumes dry up and so are careful not to take on too large of a position. They also demand greater price concessions.

One problem with the deal is that even at just under €600mn (including greenshoe), the deal size was probably too large. The offering consisted of €100mn for Golden Goose and a sale of up to €495mn for Permira. Ideally, you’d allocate about €400mn (two-thirds) to fundamental or “long only” fund managers. The €100mn Invesco cornerstone order could be filled, but it’s awkward to allocate more than 50 per cent to other long-only investors — you need them to buy in the after-market and you’ve told them anyway the deal is several times oversubscribed.

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That means (ex-Invesco) the underwriters needed roughly €600m of gross long-only demand — a tall ask for a €1.75bn market cap. The right move would have been to reduce the size of Permira’s sale, even at the cost of some after-market liquidity.

Whatever the case, the IPO didn’t come close to generating the necessary fundamental demand. The big mutual fund complexes appeared to have shied away.

In other words, the deal may have been oversubscribed, but if the underwriters had put out the deal stock, Golden Goose would have almost certainly laid a big egg. A double-digit percentage decline on the first day would’ve been a bad look for a luxury firm and a devastating reputational event for Permira.

So much for deal dynamics and tactics. A third factor weighed on the deal, and it was outside the control of Golden Goose, Permira and the army of underwriters: the day after Golden Goose set its price range, French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election after far-right parties had outperformed in European elections.

The announcement came at an inopportune time. American investors had been pouring into Europe like cruise ship passengers disembarking in Venice. And luxury is one of the sectors that Europe excels in and US funds just can’t find on domestic exchanges. The Golden Goose deal was set up to appeal to the big US money managers.

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But Macron’s announcement triggered a sell-off in European equities, including luxury names — not a bloodbath but enough to give pause to American investors. The main valuation peer, Moncler, traded down by seven per cent during Golden Goose’s offer. US participation in European IPOs is sometimes derisively called “tourist money”, and tourists tend to return home at the first whiff of political trouble.

In sum, Permira and Golden Goose probably did the market a big favour by pulling the deal and sparing investors an immediate mark-to-market loss. The failed flotation leaves an open verdict as to whether the market is open to the substantial number of midcap IPOs in the pipeline.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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