Samsonite LLC, the U.S. luggage maker owned by London-based CVC Capital Partners Ltd., plans to raise about $1 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The company hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc to manage the sale and aims to list in the second or third quarter, said the people, who declined to be identified before an announcement.
Samsonite was bought by CVC, a private equity firm, for about $1.7 billion in October 2007. Its U.S. retail division, Samsonite Co.
Stores, in 2009 sought bankruptcy protection from creditors after the financial crisis caused a slump in demand for travel-related products.
Helen Mak, a Samsonite spokeswoman in Hong Kong, didn’t immediately answer phone calls to her office. Calls to Samsonite’s head office in Mansfield, Massachusetts outside normal business hours weren’t answered. Samsonite moved its Denver headquarters to Mansfield in 2007.
Connie Ling, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, Jessica Lennon, a spokeswoman for HSBC in Hong Kong, Noel Cheung, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman in Hong Kong, and Yuk Min Hui, a Hong Kong-based RBS spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Companies have held 87 initial public offerings in Hong Kong in the past year, raising $46.6 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The luggage maker has annual sales of about $1.3 billion globally, said Subrata Butta, the company’s India managing director, according to a Press Trust of India report in August on the Hindustan Times website.
Samsonite started as Shwayder Trunk Manufacturing in Denver in 1910, with Samson as its first brand. The first Samsonite- brand suitcase was introduced 29 years later, according to Hoover’s, Inc.
