The buyer was fellow luxury retailer LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French giant that boasts a vast array of luxury goods and brands to its name, the NY Times reports. With company origins dating back to 1812 under founder Giacomo Loro Piana, owners and brothers Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, Giacomo's great-great-grandchildren, herald the importance of such traditions and welcome LVMH's share: 'LMVH has proved that it respects and nurtures family businesses and is most likely to respect the values and traditions'.

Top team

After advising for LMVH’s £3.4 billion purchase of jeweller Bulgari, Italian law firms Bonelli Erede Pappalardo and Chiomenti Studio Legale have both returned to lead the deal for LMVH’s stake in Loro Piana. Bonelli acted for LVMH headed by Umberto Nicodano and Stefano Micheli, and Chiomenti advised Loro Piana with a team that included Michele Carpinelli, Luca Fossati and Alessandra Pieretti.

Andes acquisition

Loro Piana is a family company that has produced top quality cashmere and fine wool garments for generations, and is renowned for using the 'golden fleeces' of the once-threatened vicuna, a relative of the llama, to make luxury cashmere coats that cost up to £12,000. The Telegraph reports that earlier this month Loro Piana won the rights to a 330 square-mile area of grassland in Argentina where 6,000 wild vicuna reside, in addition to purchasing a 60 per cent share of Argentinean firm Sanin SA so that they can shear the vicuna for their rare and highly valuable wool.

Expansion plans

Evidently unperturbed by the current economic climate, Loro Piana experienced an increase in sales for the year 2012 and are continuing to expand its European and US markets with rapid growth in Asia.' These are not the needs of a Boston fireman, who wouldn’t wear a cashmere coat if you gave it to him, but needs that I have, that my customers have', said Sergio Loro Piana once of his company.