It might be hard to believe, but it's been a full six months since news broke that Dainese got sold by its most recent owner, private equity megalith the Carlyle Group, to the two asset management firms that had put up the capital to allow Carlyle to purchase the Dainese Group in the first place.
At the time, major headlines blared that it had just been sold for the measly sum of one Euro, or one dollar, or something else seemingly ludicrous. As I pointed out at that time, that's because it was being sold back to the creditors that financed the purchase in the first place, so in reality, they'd already spent quite a bit more than $1 on the back end. But that doesn't make a convenient or catchy headline, so there you are with a story that requires reading rather than a pithy headline that can simply be scrolled past at will.
But as I'm sure you're aware by now, deals like this take time both for the companies themselves to close, as well as any and all necessary regulatory approval hurdles to be cleared (or not, depending). Thus it came to pass that on January 29, 2026, the European Commission finally published its official position of non-opposition to the acquisition of Dainese S.p.A. by Arcmont Asset Management and HPS Investment Partners. Meaning, it's a done deal as far as the regulators are concerned, as this is really the one thing the deal was waiting on.
For its part, Dainese was ready to go with a press release announcing the closing of the deal, and that HPS and Arcmont had together purchased 100% of Dainese. Additionally, it notes that the two firms to provided an additional sum of €30M (which appears to be significantly more than €1 by my count, even though I'm admittedly not a rocket surgeon) to close the deal.
The announcement further notes that "Dainese’s financial debt has been reduced by €190,000,001.72, resulting in €142,091,558 senior secured floating rate notes due 2030," which you may note is two full years after the previously-mentioned deadline of 2028.
As we previously mentioned, HPS Investment Partners, LLC is controlled by BlackRock Asset Management, which is widely agreed to be one of the (if not the very) biggest asset management firms worldwide. So perhaps, with that scale in mind, it's not super surprising that it might be involved here.
But a thing you may or may not know is that the other firm that now owns Dainese, Arcmont Asset Management Limited, is in fact controlled by none other than a little company called Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, or TIAA for short. If you or someone you love has ever worked in education, in any capacity, you're probably familiar with TIAA as an administrator of your retirement fund.
Arcmont, incidentally, also currently controls Schuberth GmbH; it's unclear whether this will affect its acquisition of the Dainese Group (which also includes rival motorcycle helmet brand AGV) in any way. What it does appear to mean is that as ever, the pool of owners of brands we know and love and use on a daily basis as motorcyclists continues to centralize and shrink, which usually isn't great in the long run for users.
