Amid rumours and a report which appeared in The Mail on Sunday on July 15 stating that Musto, the outdoor clothing company, had been sold for £40 million to Inflexion Private Equity, Nigel Musto confirms ...
... that the company remains firmly in the hands of the Musto family.
Speaking to Yachting World today, however, Nigel Musto - managing director - confirmed that although the company is not selling up, there are changes afoot for expansion, commenting: "It will definitely not be a wholesale Musto sell-out but we are trying to find a partner who can help bring in the skills that we need to go forward to the next stage of development."
According to Musto, the Laindon-based outdoor clothing company has made a decision to expand into the casual market but have recognised that in order to achieve this they need expert advice in that field. "We've got brands in very good positions in the core market in both the country yachting markets and we're standing on the edge of being able to do something significant outside those core markets in the more casual type areas."
To achieve this Musto approached Rothschilds in March this year to help them find a partner who had expertise in that area. Musto continued: "We've been interviewing various partners over the last couple of months and I think we're getting reasonably close to finding someone to work with. Inflexion, the company mentioned in The Mail on Sunday, are a private equity company and one of the parties we've been talking to but it's definitely not a sell-out... Something might happen over the next couple of weeks but exactly what it is... We might even get in a position where we don't do anything at all. We might get to a position where we've spoken to a lot of very intelligent people and taken in an awful lot of advice as to what they think we should be doing and decide that we can do it ourselves."
B to B { 23/07/2007 }
