American apparel giant Phillips-Van Heusen Corp. has made an offer to acquire Tommy Hilfiger from a British private equity firm for $3 billion in a cash-and-stock deal announced Monday morning. The deal comes about four years after Apax Partners, the British private equity firm, purchased Tommy for $1.6 billion in 2006 and took the company private, according to Bloomberg. (Note: Apax Partners is majority investor in The Am Law Daily’s parent company, ALM Media Properties.)
A team from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised Tommy in that 2006 deal, according to The New York Law Journal. And the firm essentially lost a client in that deal, with Tommy’s transformation from public company to private enterprise. But four years later, Wachtell is back on a Tommy deal — this time advising Phillips-Van Heusen in acquiring the Tommy brand from Apax, according to a company statement and lawyers on the deal. Partner Andrew Nussbaum led the Wachtell team on the matter. Nussbaum declined to comment when we reached him Monday.
