PRADA'S £42 MILLION LOSS
THE Prada Group said yesterday that while it had experienced double-digit sales growth during 2004 for its Prada and Miu Miu labels, difficulties with Jil Sander and Helmut Lang had dragged the overall company's results down to a loss of £42 million. The outlook was far brighter for the fiscal year which began on February 1 2005, however, with Group ceo Patrizio Bertelli announcing that he expected increasing revenue from the two main labels and further restructuring at Lang and Sander to "soon restore satisfactory levels of profitability". "Sales are going well in the whole world, we are just continuing to restructure, which we've been doing for a while," he said. Having announced last week that Raf Simons was taking over as the creative director of Jil Sander, Bertelli said he was still talking to prospective buyers for Lang, adding that Prada will continue to produce it for autumn/winter 2005-6. (June 1 2005, AM)