La Perla owner says debts will be settled soon

London-based La Perla is facing a winding-up petition from the UK’s tax authority, HMRC, which said it filed the petition after other options to recover taxes owed have proved unsuccessful.

The news comes after other winding-up petitions filed in recent months appear to have been resolved with the petitions from Purple PR, accountant Mazars and design agency Edge Retail all now withdrawn.

The Times reported that the upscale lingerie company is also being sued for over  £700,000 in unpaid invoices by consultancy firm HSO Enterprise Solutions.

But the nearly-70-year-old company, which is owned by German entrepreneur Lars Windhorst through his company Tennor Holding, said the debt problem is close to resolution. It told the newspaper that “this is a simple timing issue. A new business plan was submitted to the board and this has now been agreed. The funds are now available and every outstanding payment will be settled very soon”.

La Perla was acquired by Windhorst in 2018. It made pre-tax losses of €48.8 million on sales of €69.1 million in its latest year and has actually been loss-making for four consecutive years. It has debt of more than €330 million.

But city sources have suggested that new investment could be on the horizon with the sale of a stake of up to 10% in the label and Tennor itself ready to invest more capital in it.

Earlier this year, Windhorst had met with elected officials in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna (with La Perla’s factory being in Bologna, the region’s capital), and said that a major financing operation was being put in place.

La Perla is a major employer in the area with 220 of its 330 jobs in Italy being at the Bologna production plant.

On 22 May, Tennor said it had reached an agreement with certain of its material creditors to “restructure financial indebtedness of the Tennor Group and certain affiliated entities”.