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The son of the founder of Italy's Luxottica is leaving the world's top eyewear company, EssilorLuxottica, a spokesperson said Tuesday. This comes during disagreements within the family business.
Leonardo Maria del Vecchio is one of eight heirs to Leonardo del Vecchio, who died in 2022. He will step down from all his jobs at the French-Italian company to focus on new business projects, the spokesperson said.
At 31 years old, Del Vecchio was the chief strategy officer at the company. The group made a net profit of €2.3 billion ($2.7 billion) last year, with total sales of €28.5 billion.
As a leader among the new generation of Italian business owners, he also ran Ray-Ban, one of the company's most famous brands. The company also owns Oakley, Persol, and Oliver Peoples.
The group makes glasses for big brands like Giorgio Armani, Chanel, and Burberry. The Del Vecchio family's holding company, Delfin, is based in Luxembourg. It is the biggest shareholder in the eyewear company, owning about 32.4% of it.
Delfin also owns large parts of the Monte dei Paschi bank, the Generali insurance company, and the real estate company Covivio. Together, these are worth more than €40 billion.
In recent months, Del Vecchio had sought to become Delfin's dominant shareholder by buying out the stakes held by his brother Luca and his sister Paola.
The transaction would have increased his holding from 12.5% to 37.5% of the company's capital, significantly boosting his influence over the empire built by his father.
"An inheritance is coming, responsibilities must be assumed," he wrote on Instagram last month. But his plan ran up against opposition from some of the heirs as well as reservations from Delfin's board of directors.
In announcing his departure from the company, Del Vecchio criticized the way the group is run by its chairman Francesco Milleri, who was chosen by his father.
In a letter to Milleri published by the Milano Finanza newspaper, Del Vecchio condemned the management style that had become "remote" and "impersonal."
For analysts at investment bank Equita, Del Vecchio's exit "re-establishes a practice of separating ownership and management" within EssilorLuxottica, "which seems appropriate at this stage of tensions in Delfin's governance."
"By contrast, a change of leadership at EssilorLuxottica would, in our view, be negative, as the group's strategy has been devised and implemented consistently by Milleri over the past few years," Equita said.
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