Billionaire Pradas’ Succession Plan Backed by Versace Deal (1)

For decades, the fiercely independent Prada SpA Chairman Patrizio Bertelli talked about the need for Italian fashion houses to acquire size and scale to take on sprawling industry behemoths like LVMH and Kering SA and also avoid being gobbled up by them.

And yet his efforts to add heft to the Milan-based company he controls with his wife Miuccia Prada through an acquisition binge in the late 1990s left the group saddled with more than €1 billion ($1.13 billion) in debt and later forced the couple to seek help from Italian banks to prevent losing control.

A Prada store in central London.

Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

More than a ...