(BFW) Swatch Says It Could Form Smartwatch Cooperation Agreements

BN 10/21 09:45 Swatch Says It Could Form Smartwatch Cooperation Agreements
Swatch Says It Could Form Smartwatch Cooperation Agreements
2014-10-21 09:46:49.491 GMT


By Corinne Gretler, Jan Schwalbe and Heather Burke
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Swatch said it doesn’t rule out
forming agreements with consumer-electronics companies to help
produce smartwatches amid increasing competition in timepieces
with more functions.
* “We already work with a lot of them as a supplier of various
strategically important components,” Beatrice Howald, a
spokeswoman for Swatch, said in an e-mail, adding that the
company has all the necessary technologies for a smartwatch.
“We don’t exclude that it could come to deeper
collaboration, but it’s not on our priority list”

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To contact the reporter on this story:
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James Ludden at +44-20-7673-2645 or
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WSJ : Hermès’ Chinese Brand Slow to Gain Traction

Hermès’ Chinese Brand Slow to Gain Traction
Hermès’ Chinese Brand Shang Xia Not Expected to Break Even Until 2016.

SHANGHAI— Hermès doesn’t expect its Chinese brand to break even until 2016, a date that consultants say reflects its slow traction in China and the difficulties it faces in the midst of Beijing’s crackdown on luxury gift-giving by officials.

Hermès International SCA has spent the last seven years trying to build demand for the Chinese brand, called Shang Xia, betting that Chinese luxury shoppers are increasingly willing to buy $4,600 bamboo leather handbags and $100,000 Ming dynasty-inspired furniture.

By 2016, “for the first time profit and loss will be balanced,” said Patrick Thomas, chairman of Shang Xia, in an interview. Mr. Thomas declined to disclose total sales figures for the Chinese brand.

In its latest effort, Hermès last week opened the doors of a Shanghai-based retail and VIP entertainment outlet for Shang Xia. The French company invested around 2 million euros ($2.6 million) in the retail project, Mr. Thomas said. He declined to disclose how much Hermès has invested overall in the Chinese brand. In a period of three years, Hermès hopes Shang Xia’s new Shanghai store, its largest of three globally, will surpass €10 million in sales, Mr. Thomas said. The other stores are in Beijing and Paris.

Shang Xia’s revenue is only a fraction of Hermès’ nearly €4 billion in sales last year, Mr. Thomas said. But it represents a new approach by a European luxury company to breathe life into the once heady Chinese luxury-goods market hit by the crackdown on official corruption and brand fatigue after luxury names invested heavily in China. Luxury-sales growth in the country is expected to reach 2% this year, compared with 20% growth three years ago, according to projections from U.S. consulting firm Bain & Co.

Shang Xia has also been slow to gain traction in China, said Matthew Crabbe, director of research, Asia-Pacific, at consulting firm Mintel Group.

Still, some say that China’s own high-end brands may be reaching a turning point. Entrepreneur and designer Wang Yiyang is expanding his Zuczug store, a premium outlet selling $185 trousers and $350 dresses. The Council of Fashion Designers of America sponsored Chinese designer Masha Ma on a trip to New York to meet with heads of luxury retailers, like Bergdorf Goodman.

“Chinese consumers’ interest in luxury is becoming more succinct and discriminating, shifting from acquiring big, famous brands only to discovering smaller, more individualistic labels, including those from China,” said Torsten Stocker, a partner at consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

Mr. Thomas said “the investment in Shang Xia has been a drop in the bucket of profit for Hermès,” adding that Hermès lost money in its 25-year China investment until three or four years ago. The company has always prized building a quality brand for the long term, rather than focusing on the investment for short-term gains, he said, adding that Hermès has still achieved 20% to 25% sales growth in the midst of the crackdown on luxury gifting. The company doesn’t break out detailed sales results by country.

Chinese citizens are ready to appreciate more of their own cultural roots, said Jiang Qiong Er, Shang Xia founder and artistic director. Shang Xia soon plans to auction off 20 handmade pieces—tea cups and ornamental boxes— at auction house Christie’s Shanghai sale later this month.

The first floor of Shang Xia’s new retail store, attached to the four-story Hermès outlet in a historical government building in Shanghai’s former French concession, is open to the public, while private tea rooms are available only for special guests, said Ms. Jiang.

Hermès hopes the brand, which runs an outlet also in Beijing, will take off even beyond China, said Mr. Thomas. The company opened a small Paris-based outlet last year to test demand, he said.

Other high-end companies have invested in Chinese brands in recent years. In 2012, Kering SA acquired Chinese jeweler Qeelin Ltd. French luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA invested about $200 million in 2012 for a roughly 10% stake in closely-held Chinese casual-wear company Trendy International Group.

Ms. Jiang said she expects Shang Xia to have more competitors in only a few years. “China does everything faster,” she said.

(RBC) ECB Corp. Bond News - Quick Comment.

ECB looking at buying corporate bonds.....note this market is very small in the grand scheme of things- the reason is because banks fund with loans (and equity) not so much securities, unlike in the US. So Non financial corporate loans are EUR 1.1trn in total. non financial corporate loans are EUR 9trn. And this is the problem with Euro area QE in general. We do not have that large a securities market and so it is very difficult for the central bank to buy things with meaningful consequence. That is why they targeted ABS and want to spur that market- makes a more liquid securitised market for loans. This policy economically would not change our view. It is clearly going to be positive for companies targeted for purchases though.

Genworth Breakup Offers Reward a Decade After GE Split: Real M&A

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Genworth Breakup Offers Reward a Decade After GE Split: Real M&A 2014-10-21 09:00:01.0 GMT

(For a Real M&A column news alert: {SALT REALMNA <GO>}.)

By Zachary Tracer and Brooke Sutherland Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Perhaps one breakup leads to another. Insurer Genworth Financial Inc. could reap $4 billion for shareholders by splitting up a decade after General Electric Co. pushed it out on its own. Shares of the $6.3 billion insurer are trading below the price at which GE took it public in 2004. Billionaire John Paulson, a Genworth shareholder, says one way to reverse that slump may be to separate the global mortgage-guarantee operations from the business selling life and long-term care coverage in the U.S. A split could help push Genworth shares up 64 percent, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. There are no operational benefits to keeping the insurer’s two businesses together and they would be easier to value as separate entities, according to Raymond James Financial Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tom McInerney signaled last month that he was open to considering a split once the two businesses are financially capable of standing on their own, possibly as soon as 2016. “I don’t think it makes long-term strategic sense for the mortgage insurer and life insurer to be part of one company,” said Ryan Krueger, an analyst at Stifel Financial Corp.’s KBW. “The reason they’re together is all because of a legacy decision by GE.” A representative of Richmond, Virginia-based Genworth declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Paulson & Co.

Crisis, Aftermath

Since its spinoff from GE, Genworth has confronted a barrage of challenges. The worst U.S. housing crash in seven decades drained capital and then the record-low interest rates that followed pressured profits. Insurers generate earnings by investing clients’ premiums until they need to pay claims. Net income for Genworth was $560 million last year, about half what it generated in 2007. The stock is trading at just 0.4 times the company’s book value, the cheapest multiple for any company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index for which data are available. Improving operating results and an eventual split of the mortgage and life-insurance businesses could help reverse that sagging valuation, according to Paulson. “If the company chooses to spin off its mortgage-insurance and other life-insurance businesses into two separate companies, there could be substantial additional upside,” the money manager said in a letter to investors discussing first-quarter results for his hedge fund firm. He said Genworth can trade for at least $24 a share, and even more if the company breaks apart.

Hartford Precedent

Paulson, best known for a successful bet against subprime mortgages amid the financial crisis, also pushed for a split at Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. The insurer didn’t heed Paulson’s call for a breakup, although it did shed assets. The stock is up 91 percent since the investor pressed the CEO on a February 2012 conference call to unlock value. Genworth CEO McInerney has rejected Paulson’s breakup plan, at least for the time being. He said in September he wants to improve the operating performance of both divisions first. Then it will be time to talk “with investors in order to decide, ‘Is it better to keep the businesses together or not,’” he said. The company still needs access to the cash flow from the improved mortgage-insurance business “to help cushion any blows that may occur while they’re waiting for interest rates to move in a favorable direction” for the life-insurance business, said Ken Billingsley, an analyst at Compass Point Research & Trading LLC.

Setting Up

Genworth should be able to set itself up for a breakup by 2016, according to Suneet Kamath, an analyst at UBS AG. By that time, the company will probably have cut its leverage to a more acceptable threshold and lifted cash flow at both the mortgage and life-insurance businesses, the analyst wrote in a report last month. Genworth should be valued at about $21 a share, or 64 percent more than its closing price yesterday, according to the average of three estimates compiled by Bloomberg. A split would “certainly make it cleaner,” Steven Schwartz, a Chicago-based analyst at Raymond James, said in a phone interview. “There was no real reason for this ever to be together except to make General Electric’s life easier. Mortgage-insurance analysts don’t understand life insurance and the life insurance guys probably don’t know mortgage insurance as well as we should.”

Earnings Clues

The company’s third-quarter report may help advance the cause of breakup advocates. Genworth is reviewing whether it set aside enough funds to cover long-term care claims and will discuss the results with its earnings. The earnings will be released on Nov. 5 and a conference call is scheduled for the next day. If the review is “really bad, you could probably have people say, ‘Why don’t you split this up,’” to focus on the more stable mortgage business, Billingsley of Compass Point said. “If it’s not bad, I think it gives management a little bit more breathing room to say, ‘We’re going to keep this together because our plan is working.’” Keeping mortgage insurance and long-term care coverage together helps create a natural hedge, said Joel Salomon, whose SaLaurMor Capital LP fund owns the stock. Higher interest rates are good for long-term care insurance, while they may slow housing sales, weighing on home-loan guarantees. There may also be tax reasons for sticking with the status quo, tied to losses accumulated at the mortgage-insurance during the financial crisis, said Schwartz of Raymond James. Even so, those benefits won’t exist forever and an eventual split is likely, he said. “I think they recognize that it muddies the story” to keep the two units together, Schwartz said. “It honestly doesn’t make sense from a corporate view outside of taxes. It really doesn’t.”

For Related News and Information: Genworth CEO McInerney Rejects Paulson’s Breakup Plan for Now NSN N7TWI36S9732<GO> Genworth CEO Says Wall Street Misunderstood Reserve Remarks NSN N9JK7C6KLVRX<GO> Genworth Debt Leaves Brink as Junk Risk Ebbs: Corporate Finance NSN MHQ0ET0UQVI9<GO> Genworth Deal News: GNW US <Equity> TCNI MNA <GO> Top deal news: DTOP <GO> Real M&A columns: NI REALMNA <GO>

--With assistance from Kelly Bit in New York.

To contact the reporters on this story: Zachary Tracer in New York at +1-212-617-1673 or ztracer1@bloomberg.net; Brooke Sutherland in New York at +1-212-617-0448 or bsutherland7@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Beth Williams at +1-212-617-2307 or bewilliams@bloomberg.net; Dan Kraut at +1-212-617-2432 or dkraut2@bloomberg.net Dan Kraut

WWD : Oscar de la Renta Dies

NEW YORK — He led a charmed life.

Oscar de la Renta, who died Monday night at age 82 after a long battle with cancer, was fashion’s favorite ladies’ man. His Latin-lover good looks, fascination with feminine style, strong color sense and impeccable social skills — a wonderful sense of humor among them — made him a court dressmaker to a large portion of the international set and a designer for First Ladies from the time of Betty Ford. He was a particular favorite of three of the last: Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush — and Michelle Obama recently donned one of his dresses at the White House event for fashion students.

While de la Renta could design clothes that were editorial darlings, his genius was in making women, regardless of their own intrinsic pulchritude, look and feel beautiful. Romantic, glamorous styles were his signature: tastefully extravagant, Paris-influenced, with an undercurrent of Latin pizazz. He was best-known for his designs for the Ladies Who Lunch, the likes of Babe Paley, C.Z. Guest and Marella Agnelli, along with a glittering constellation of other aristocrats and socialites, performers, broadcasters and top executives, who often became, not just customers, but friends. Yet de la Renta always remained current and in recent years, a younger set — who included actresses Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Garner and Lea Michele — fell under his spell.


De la Renta was born July 22, 1932, in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. (As he once put it, “I am the only Third World designer.”) At 18, he went to Madrid to study painting at the Academy of San Fernando. There he began sketching for top Spanish fashion houses; before long, he was working with the legendary couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga. De la Renta’s next stop was Paris, where he became a couture assistant to Antonio Castillo, then designer of Lanvin. As de la Renta recalled in 1979, “When I worked in Paris, Castillo and Balenciaga always had evening dresses inspired by Spanish peasants, flamenco; dresses taken from paintings by Goya, Zurbaran, Zuloaga; the bullring colors; the Princess of Eboli [a 16th-century Spanish beauty with an eye patch]. Balenciaga’s dresses never looked ethnic, like costumes.”

These descriptions also evoke the styles that made de la Renta’s name.

In 1963, he came to New York to design the made-to-measure collection for Elizabeth Arden. Nicolas de Gunzburg, a White Russian aristocrat who was an editor at Vogue, was one of his mentors. (De Gunzburg’s other designer proteges: Bill Blass and Calvin Klein.) Diana Vreeland advised de la Renta to take the position at Arden, noting that there, his own name would be promoted, since Arden herself wasn’t a designer. Vreeland, of course, was right.

Key to the designer’s success was a gift for feminine friendship and an elegant lifestyle, both of which he cultivated early on. De la Renta met C. Z. Guest in Spain, where they socialized with Francisco Franco. Another friend, Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, introduced him to the Kennedy clan. Even as a young man new in town as the designer at Arden, de la Renta was living on two floors of a New York townhouse filled with French and Italian period furniture and Spanish paintings. But, as his longtime business partner Jerry Shaw noted, it was the designer’s way with society women that made his career. “Oscar really caters to the ladies,” he said. “He knows how to design beautiful clothes and make women look very attractive.”


Almost overnight, it seems, de la Renta became the ultimate extra man, spending weekends with Guest and island-hopping with Babe Paley. The houses and gardens that de la Renta went on to create with his first wife, Francoise de Langlade, and his second, Annette de la Renta, were lushly chronicled in breathless articles in shelter and society magazines and newspapers over a period of 40-plus years. For his part, the designer revelled in the domestic pleasures he enjoyed in his sanctuaries in New York, the Dominican Republic and Kent, Connecticut, where he loved to cook and garden. In Kent, a dwelling modelled on an English country house was on nearly 500 acres, next to 600 acres of wildlife reserve. Fond of horticulture, which he said he found “relaxing,” de la Renta created remarkable landscapes at his estates and, in 2001, a garden at Lord Jacob Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor that is open to the public. As the designer observed in 2008, “What is nice about a house in the country is that it’s the work of a lifetime. You see the evolution of your own life in a way. You never finish.”

When de la Renta arrived at Arden, Ben Shaw was a top entrepreneur and power broker in New York. Shaw, who was known as Mr. Seventh Avenue, helped launch the careers of or backed a remarkable array of American designers, including Halston, Norman Norell, Giorgio Sant’Angelo, Stephen Burrows, Donald Brooks and Dominic Rompollo. In the Fifties, he was at the helm of Jane Derby, a designer dress house.

Jerry Shaw began working for his father there in 1956. “My father was a pioneer in the designer field,” the younger Shaw said in 1994. “He had, among other attributes, a great ability for spotting and promoting talent. He felt that, at some point, young designers really had to be brought to the front. Their names could be put on labels, but you had to get it past the stores.

“We got to the point where business went to a certain level and we couldn’t get it past that, and that’s when Oscar got into the picture. The name became Oscar de la Renta for Jane Derby. A year later, Jane Derby died, and the company was restructured as Oscar de la Renta.” In 1969, the firm was sold to publicly owned Richton International, then sold back to Shaw and Oscar de la Renta. After Ben Shaw retired about a year later, Jerry Shaw and de la Renta became equal partners. In the late Eighties, the deal was restructured, giving de la Renta a controlling interest.


One of the breakthrough moments for de la Renta, and indeed for American fashion, came in 1973. It was supposed to be a friendly, festive evening between two groups, one of American and the other of French designers, but “An Evening at Versailles,” a fashion extravaganza held to raise funds to refurbish the royal chateau, turned into a bit of a competition. Five French designers — Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, Andre Oliver (then at Cardin) and Marc Bohan (then at Christian Dior) — had picked the five U.S. designers: de la Renta, Halston, Anne Klein, Bill Blass and Stephen Burrows. The Americans stole the show with their jazzy, upbeat presentation, staged by Kay Thompson. WWD called it an “American triumph,” and it did much to raise these designers’ profiles on an international stage.

Doing business could be a pleasure, too. “We had a lot of fun over the years,” Shaw recalled. “I remember a show we did in Japan sometime in the late Seventies or early Eighties. It was a big, extravagant stage show and they spelled out Oscar de la Renta on these moving glass panels. I was amazed how they did it, so I went backstage and there was this old Japanese man spinning them on rods. It worked perfectly. Today, it would all be computerized and it wouldn’t work.”

According to Shaw, it was Gordon Franklin, president of Saks Fifth Avenue, and Adam Gimbel, who was chairman, who started putting names on the labels, including those of de la Renta, Bill Blass, Donald Brooks and Anne Klein. At the time, only the names of the manufacturers, such as Ben Zuckerman, or department-store private-label monikers, like Saks’ Sophie — named for Sophie Gimbel, Adam’s wife —appeared on the label. Shaw also called the Oscar de la Renta Boutique line, opened in 1967, the first secondary ready-to-wear line for a Seventh Avenue designer.

After Shaw retired, Jeffry Aronsson, an attorney who had served as general counsel for the company, became the firm’s president and ceo. During his tenure, Aronsson revamped the firm’s licensing, helping build the business in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America and overseeing the introduction of bridal, intimates and furniture lines.

To complement the signature line, the firm launched Oscar de la Renta Accessories for fall 2001. Cosmetic cases, scarves, eyewear, jewelry, furs, lingerie, and sleepwear were also available. For men, de la Renta licensed products included hosiery, sports coats, suits, and trousers. In South and Central America and Mexico, there was a sportswear line for men and boys and Oscar Jeans for men and women. In fall 2004, de la Renta launched O Oscar, a moderate women’s sportswear line, which was later discontinued. Most recently, bags, shoes, and sunglasses have been added to the mix of his main collection. In 2002, Oscar de la Renta Home inaugurated a furniture collection and home fragrance collection. Wallpaper, fabrics, tabletop pieces, bedding and rugs have followed.

De la Renta launched his first perfume, Oscar, in 1977. Today, Oscar, which won the Perennial Success Award in 1991, is a best seller in over 70 countries. In 1980, he created a fragrance for men, Pour Lui. In 1995, de la Renta was the recipient of the Living Legend Award from the American Society of Perfumes. In fall 1999, Oscar for Men was introduced and 2002 marked the debut of Intrusion. In 2004, de la Renta introduced Rosamor for women. But he later would take his fragrance business in-house to relaunch his signature fragrance. In order to do so, de la Renta sold a 20 percent stake to GF Capital Management.

De la Renta received the Council of Fashion Designers of America Women’s Wear Designer of the Year Award in 2000.

In February 1990, he was honored with the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award. From 1973 to 1976, and from 1986 to 1988, Oscar de la Renta was president of the CFDA. He won the Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award twice and made it into the Coty Hall of Fame in 1973.

In June 2013, he was given the CFDA Founders Award, which was presented to him by Hillary Clinton. In his gracious acceptance speech, de la Renta said that he still had lots of design ideas and, while honored, didn’t want an honorary award — he wanted to win the Women’s Wear Designer of the Year Award.

From 1993 to 2002, de la Renta designed the couture collection for the house of Pierre Balmain, becoming the first American of that era to design for a French couture house. He was awarded the Legion d’Honneur as a Commandeur. The Dominican Republic also honored him with the order al Mérito de Juan Pablo Duarte and the order of Cristóbal Colón. In 1996, de la Renta received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hispanic Heritage Society, and in 2000 he was the Grand Marshall of New York City’s Hispanic Day Parade. That same year, de la Renta received the Gold Medal of Bellas Artes from the King of Spain. Oscar de la Renta helped to build a school and day-care center in the Dominican Republic for 1,200 children, from which he adopted his son Moises de la Renta. Another of his projects there was the luxurious Punta Cana resort.

He was long a patron of the arts. He served as a board member of The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall and Channel Thirteen/WNET. He also served on the boards of New Yorkers for Children, the Americas Society, and was chairman of the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute.

In a speech at the WWD/DNR CEO Summit in June 2001, de la Renta recalled his days in the City of Light as a young man. “‘I remember all the big stores, the American stores and American manufacturers used to come to Paris and they would come to the collection,” he said. “They were able to see the collections and buy some of the clothes. I remember Norman Norell coming to Balenciaga and buying clothes and then making them for the American market with the signature of Norman Norell.”

The turning point for him: getting his own signature collection. He also noted the retail breakthrough at Saks. “‘I remember back in 1966 when I was summoned together with Bill Blass, Donald Brooks, Geoffrey Beene and Pauline Trigere to Adam Gimbel’s office at Saks Fifth Avenue,” de la Renta said. ‘Mr. Gimbel wanted to announce very, very important news to us: The news was the store was no longer going to remove our label and would carry [that of] the designers.’”

De la Renta’s affinity for women — and for the feminine — seemed to come naturally, since the designer was the sixth of seven children and the only boy. His matriarchal clan included a formidable mother, who, as he noted, “Was a central figure in my life, much more so than my father,” and an even more formidable grandmother. She was a stylish woman whom he described as always wearing stark, floor-length white cotton dresses, each with a flounce at the hem, along with her trademark cameo and diamond earrings. When she was young, his grandmother had married a considerably older widower with eight children — de la Renta’s grandfather — and then went on to have eight of her own. When she was 35, her husband died.

As de la Renta said in 1967, “I wanted to study painting, but my father did not recognize that as a profession. You see, there had been many doctors, lawyers and diplomats in my family.

“My mother was sympathetic to my wishes, though, and she helped me go to Spain when I was 17. I stayed there for 10 years, and while I was there, my mother died. My father [who was in insurance] was still not too pleased about my intended career, but then I got into designing clothes by accident.

“One day, a friend came by on her way to the dressmaker. She said she didn’t know what to do about a certain dress, and I sketched out a few ideas for her. Later, she was wearing the dress and Ambassador Lodge’s wife saw it. Mrs. Lodge introduced me to Balenciaga. He agreed to train me, and that’s how it all began. I later went to Paris for a time, and then came here [New York].” Soon he had become famous; his father, as he put it, “doesn’t mind now [about his career].”

In the Sixties, de la Renta designed such looks as a windowpane plaid cape over a matching suit and a tunic over short-shorts, both strewn with flowers; jumper jumpsuits, and long, full skirts for evening. A shirtdress with a matching cardigan was one of his Seventies formulas for evening. Rich gypsy looks were among his signatures, appearing throughout the years, along with flamenco dresses, peasant scarves, spangles and ruffles, ruffles and more ruffles. The flounces might turn up in layers on a tiered skirt, at the hem of a dress, at the top of a one-shoulder gown or in piles of satin-faced organza, gauze or gazar. In the late Seventies, patterned, yoked and tiered evening skirts — sometimes in wool challis, worn with jackets of fabrics in contrasting patterns — were the order of the day, along with the likes of an allover lace Lillie Langtry dress, its slinky shape following the body.

Tailored suits were long one of de la Renta’s trademarks, and in the Eighties they might turn up in opulent brocades trimmed in fur. In the Nineties, his evening dresses and separates became more streamlined, but more colorful and jewelled. De la Renta dressed Nancy Reagan in the Eighties and outfitted Hillary Clinton in a gold lace gown for the second Clinton inaugural in 1997, for appearances as Sen. Clinton and for her daughter Chelsea’s wedding in 2010. De la Renta also created Laura Bush’s silver evening dress for her husband’s second inauguration in 2005.

Many attempts have been made over the years to decipher de la Renta’s appeal to women. A W magazine article, for instance, from December 1984, titled “Heavenly Harem: Oscar de l’Amour,” somewhat heatedly anatomizes it: “‘Hello, my sweet,’” a voice croons through the telephone. ‘When do we dine, my beloved? My car will be at your house at 7:30.’ Oscar de la Renta smiles with comfortable intimacy, slipping down into his chaise, and looks off dreamily, imagining the eager feminine face on the other end of the phone. He has just made a dinner date, and yet another woman in the world is ecstatic.

“When he is with her, he will fix on her, and her alone....He will tease her, perhaps a bit too relentlessly, then coax and cajole her to good humor again. They will discuss menus, flowers; he will pause to nip a wilted bloom from a plant. Although he is one of the canniest, most efficient maitres de maison, he will convince her tenderly that he needs her advice and supervision, leaving her delirious, for this, after all, is one of the things women want most from a man.” Women such as Grace Dudley, Marie-Helene de Rothschild, Mica Ertegun, Casey Ribicoff, Evangeline Bruce, Helen Rochas, Nancy Kissinger and Naty Abascal found him “handsome, sexy, but most of all a good, caring friend.”

For all his charm and beautiful manners — not to mention his dancing skills — de la Renta was no pushover. He engaged in some notable fights in his time. He tangled with Calvin Klein in 1979, when both men went to Japan at the same time and got into a squabble about models. “If one of my girls came out in a dress that was a broom and one of his girls came out dressed in gold, my girl would make mincemeat out of his girl,” de la Renta said. In 1991, de la Renta unintentionally alienated Karl Lagerfeld when he attended a Chanel show that had a racy bondage theme, and at lunch afterwards, as someone informed Lagerfeld, said that such a motif would never fly in New York. It took years for the two designers to make up.

Then there was the disagreement with his longtime client and friend Nancy Reagan, who, de la Renta said, became angry when he began designing for Hillary Clinton. “I mean, she was really very, very nice to me, but I was really very, very nice to her,” he noted. “I vote for the people I like; I don’t vote for parties. I voted for President Reagan, but I voted for President Clinton. I think that, regardless of your political inclination, if the First Lady of your country asks you to do something, you don’t say no.” De la Renta went on to become great friends with the Clintons, with whom he shared a passion for cards, which they would play at Punta Cana when the Clintons stayed with him. “I like them a lot,” he said. “First of all, he is so bright, and second, he is just so unbelievably warm. He just sort of engulfs you.”

In January 2011, the outspoken de la Renta criticized First Lady Michelle Obama for wearing Sarah Burton’s red and black dress for Alexander McQueen to a White House state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao. He felt that she should have worn something by an American designer. “This is an important issue,” de la Renta said. “Do you think Kate Middleton is going to be married in Marc Jacobs? Mrs. Obama does look great. She should take that and do something. She could do a great good for our industry. We need to create jobs here, create jobs on Seventh Avenue, too.”

A year later, de la Renta would further stir controversy when he appointed fallen Dior couturier John Galliano to a temporary residence in his design studio. The collaboration — evident in de la Renta’s fall 2013 collection — stirred an outcry given Galliano’s anti-Semitic statements. But de la Renta was firm in his belief that everyone deserved a second chance.

He and his firm’s chief executive, his son-in-law Alex Bolen, would hold discussions with Galliano about the British designer joining the House of de la Renta on a permanent basis. But those talks broke down earlier this year over Galliano’s demands. Instead, de la Renta recently appointed Peter Copping as creative director, luring him from his successful stint at Nina Ricci.

In 1967, de la Renta had become the third husband of Françoise de Langlade, an editor in chief of French Vogue. Born in Bordeaux and raised between Paris and Martinique, she worked for Elsa Schiaparelli and Harper’s Bazaar before joining French Vogue. After she married the designer, de Langlade became a consultant to Elizabeth Arden and opened a decorating business; among her clients were fashion executive Marina Schiano and actors Helmut Berger and Florinda Bolkan. De Langlade’s previous husbands included French businessman Jean Bruère, by whom she had one son, Jean Marc Bruère, and diplomat Nicholas Bagenow. She died of cancer in 1983.

In 1989, de la Renta married Anne France Engelhard, known as Annette, the former wife of New York banker Samuel Pryor Reed and the stepdaughter of American minerals tycoon Charles W. Engelhard Jr. The story of how the philanthropist became his second wife is a classic Oscar tale. As WWD’s Executive Editor Bridget Foley wrote in a W article in November 2001, the two had been together for awhile, but Reed was reluctant to tie the knot. De la Renta, however, thought that, since they were living together, they ought to get hitched. He “engaged in covert plans for a Christmas wedding, stealing away to the records bureau in the Dominican Republic with Annette’s passport and papers. He invited her mother and sisters, but given the holidays and Annette’s December 24 birthday, no one grew suspicious.” The Erteguns and the Kissingers were among the guests. “The night before we were married we had dinner, and after dinner I stood up and made a toast: ‘I want you all to know that tomorrow morning, Annette and I will be married.’ Annette gasped. Her mother went to her room for salts.

“Annette told Henry Kissinger that she didn’t want to get married. According to de la Renta, the savvy diplomat then advised her to say no, but to make sure she meant it. He said to her, ‘Now, let me tell you, Oscar is Latino and very proud. He is going to ask you to make a public statement, and, if you don’t marry him, he will leave you,’” de la Renta says. “So I knew she was going to marry me.”

In addition to his wife, de la Renta is survived by his three step-children Beatrice Reed, Charlie Reed and Eliza Bolen; his son Moyses de la Renta; three sisters, all of whom reside in the Dominican Republic, and nine grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements could not be immediately learned.​

(MS) Cross-Asset Insights : Taking Stock, Adding Stocks

Cross-Asset Insights
Taking Stock, Adding Stocks

Our key messages in the wake of volatile price action are that BBB expansion remains intact even as more easing is on the way. We add to US equities now and keep carry exposure to HY, EM local rates. We like USD longs and shorting EUR rates vs. US and Japan.

- The Blindside: We had expected that the most likely near-term driver of volatility would be concerns that stronger US data would shift the Fed’s path. Instead, growth fears have returned in earnest, forcing us to reassess our views.
- Economics – Fight the Growth Scare: Having been below consensus on global growth, we think the market is now more bearish than we are. US growth is still on track for a strong second half; lower oil prices are a positive shock for EM and DM consumers; and central bank policy should remain accommodative, with no Fed hike until 2016.
- The Correction in Context: Measured by the moves in stocks, spreads, yields, and volatility, the current selloff is worse than median bull-market corrections since 1987 and has occurred in a shorter period too. Weakness has clearly been driven by growth fears, suggesting breakevens may be a key indicator for turning sentiment.
- Asset Allocation Changes: We add to US equities and close our underweight in EM credit. This follows the US HY and EM local additions last week. We cut our Bunds allocation further at current valuations, now a notch below US Treasuries.
- Best Ideas – What to Do Now: We summarize our best ideas, many of which are anchored on the premise that growth, while sub-par, is not rolling over.

(BarCap) Philips : Break-up upside limited and remote

Philips’ Q3 did not turn the market’s post-CMD sentiment. The main take-aways for us are that emerging markets remain fragile, Lighting markets remain weak and Philips appears to be struggling to control working capital and net debt. Near term
this triggers further mid-single digit downgrades to our numbers. Longer term, we worry about paradigm shifts in Philips’ end-markets (Structural slowdown in Healthcare, structural disruption in Lighting). We don’t think that these are solved
by the announced break-up, though under a “goldilocks” FY16E scenario we can see €27/share of value in the future businesses. But on a 12 month view, we lower our PT to €23/share. Following the recent sell-off, we see better value in quality names in the sector, for example Schneider (+35%), Atlas Copco (+27%) or Legrand (+17%). We have a clear preference for Osram as a restructuring play and see over 60% upside to our €43 PT, as well as more immediate catalysts in the form of more explicit communication about the strategy to become a niche lighting player.

(BarCap) ABB, Schneider & Legrand : Q3 Preview: Low growth expectations

*ABB, Schneider and Legrand - Q3 Preview: Low growth expectations

Sentiment on ABB has improved based on a more optimistic end market view and the launch of a $4bn buyback on 16th September. Meanwhile, Schneider's increased caution on end markets has led the stock to correct sharply,
underperforming ABB by 22% since June. With expectations on Schneider and Legrand already at a low level, we believe that the market is already pricing in a more subdued growth environment. We continue to recommend Schneider and
Legrand, both OW, over ABB (EW) based on valuation and a superior business mix. However, ABB's share price will get some support again from the buyback, which should restart post publication of results.