Megha Mittal won the bidding war for Escada yesterday, beating out an offer by Sean Ley, the son of Escada’s founder. Mittal will buy the fashion house for an undisclosed sum, and keep CEO Bruno Saelzer onboard. Ley’s team had planned to install a new CEO, Giacomo Santucci, the former head of Gucci. But Mitall believes in Saelzer’s plan of turning Escada into an affordable luxury label with more daywear, rather than relying on exorbitantly priced red-carpet gowns.
But just who is Megha Mittal? She’s the 33-year-old daughter-in-law of Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive of ArcelorMittal, the largest steel company in the world. He’s the eighth-richest person in the world and the richest person in the U.K., where he resides. Megha had been looking to make a fashion investment for about a year, and had also expressed interest in Gianfranco Ferré. Thank goodness she’s finally got it all figured out. Life sucks when things are up in the air like that.
