Prada doubles its profits – No crisis for luxury goods, at least as far as Prada is concerned. The Italian fashion house just presented a record quarter report with profits more than doubled (+111% from late January to late April) and news from Bloomberg showed the company’s great performance on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (June 7 – Prada Soars in H.K. as Profit Doubles on Luxury Demand). Les Echos highlighted the effect of luxury-minded tourists who have pushed up sales at the brand’s European stores (June 8 – Prada double son bénéfice au premier trimestre grâce aux touristes*), while the Wall Street Journal reported on the cautious optimism of CEO Patrizio Bertelli (June 7 – Prada Cautious Despite Dazzling Profit*).
Made in Italy: hotels and supercars – The foreign press also focuses on other Italian brands. Le Figaro ran a piece on the new five-star hotel that Bulgari is opening in London ( June 5 – Hôtel Bvlgari: Londres découvre la dolce vita*). And while China Daily also wrote about the hotel industry, it focused on Lamborghini: the firm belonging to the car manufacturing family has decided to open a luxury hotel in Suzhou, China (June 5 – Italian brand luxury hotel opens in Suzhou). There were also two mentions of another historic carmaker, Ferrari. Clarin reported on the 1962 250 GTO sold to a collector for 35 million dollars, making it the world’s most expensive car (Clarin, June 6 – Una Ferrari de 1962 se convirtió en el auto más caro de la historia), and El Mundo described the new Cavallino line for golfers (June 6 – Ferrari corre en el ‘green’)
Sara Errani and Pierluigi Collina: Italian sports – In sports, the attention of the foreign press was centered on the success of Sara Errani. In view of the finals at the French Open, there were several articles on the Italian tennis player. For the Swiss paper Le Matin, Sara is great (June 8 – Sharapova à une victoire d’un Grand Chelem de carrière),while according to the Portuguese Publico she is simply the best around (Maria Sharapova é a número um, mas Sara Errani tem sido melhor que todas). And, as the European Cup starts, El Pais dedicated space to Pierluigi Collina: the Italian referee, now a member of the arbitration committee of UEFA, has been called to give a lecture to the World Champion Spanish National Team on behavior in the field (June 7 – Los consejos de Collina a los españoles sobre el arbitraje).
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