Phillips-Van Heusen wants to own both Tommy Hilfigers.
Confirming an exclusive March 3 report by The Post, the New York-based owner of Calvin Klein yesterday announced it plans to buy Hilfiger from British private-equity firm Apax Partners with a cash-and-stock offer worth more than $3 billion.
But in the weeks leading up to the deal, PVH has consulted legal experts to make sure the massive acquisition includes control over Tommy Hilfiger the designer, in addition to the company he founded, sources said.
PVH’s big worry: that the notoriously business-savvy designer will someday try to sell clothing or other products that bear his name in a venture outside the company.
“You could say that PVH doesn’t trust him, but the reality is that they’re making a huge investment and they don’t want to take any chances,” said one person familiar with the situation. “They want to ensure they have the ironclad ability to control the name ‘Tommy Hilfiger.’ ”
Shares in PVH surged nearly 10 percent to $52.40 yesterday.
A spokesman for PVH declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for privately held Tommy Hilfiger said the designer’s relationship with the company won’t change as a result of the merger.
In a written statement yesterday, the companies said the designer will remain “Principal Designer and Visionary for the Tommy Hilfiger brand.”
Nevertheless, industry insiders say that lately, Hilfiger has quietly moved to snap up middle-market apparel brands through a little-publicized investment partnership based in New York.
While the relationship between the new investment firm and the Tommy Hilfiger brand isn’t clear, the designer has “seemed a little cagey” on the question of whether he might try to use his name to revamp and market any labels he acquires, according to one industry source.
The company Tommy Hilfiger owns the rights to its trademark name. But ownership of such rights hasn’t prevented legal tussles in the past.
One notable example is Joseph Abboud. Seven years after the men’s clothing designer sold his trademark in 2000 for $65.5 million, he was sued for allegedly infringing on it by JA Apparel, a New York-based company that bought the trademark in 2004.
The matter wasn’t settled until January, when a judge issued strict rules on how Abboud could use his name, limiting it to the fine print in ads.
“The best thing [for PVH] to do would be to get an explicit statement,” said Thomas Smart, a partner at Kaye Scholer, the law firm that represented JA Apparel in the Joseph Abboud case. “They need to know that [Hilfiger the designer] is transferring his name for commercial purposes generally, and not just his trademark.”