Tom Haynes
Behind the sleek sunglasses and effortless glamour inextricably linked with the Ray-Ban name lies a messy family feud that is anything but stylish.
“My father gave us everything, but not love,” declared Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, one of the heirs to the family empire in a podcast interview with Italian rapper Fedez that invited comparisons with the TV drama Succession.
As well as the revelations about his relationship with his father, the eccentric 31-year-old billionaire also boasted of sleeping with more than 2000 women and owning two yachts, while joking that he had debts of around €1 billion ($1.6 billion).
But it is his increasingly public dispute with Francesco Milleri, the man his father entrusted with running Ray-Ban, the Paris and Milan-based group EssilorLuxottica, that could have the most profound consequences.
Leonardo Maria has accused the chief executive of losing his way, blaming him for a collapse in the company’s share price.
In an interview he said of Milleri: “When he was delivering results, I was his biggest supporter.” He also criticised the company’s lack of vision and said Milleri should be more concerned about the share-price slump.
“The momentum from my father has run out,” he said.
In his resignation letter, Leonardo Maria said: “This is not the Luxottica I grew up in.” Milleri subsequently described the public disagreements as “useless and unfounded”.
Yet his attack on the boss chosen by his father, Leonardo Del Vecchio, is awkwardly timed. Shares in the world’s largest eyewear company surged around 15 per cent on Wednesday after better-than-expected results, strengthening Milleri’s position ahead of his reappointment next year.
It is the latest twist in a bitter battle over a family fortune worth more than €55 billion ($88 billion), with eight heirs fighting over their inheritance while the business at its heart continues to thrive.
“There is always some governance drama,” is the understated assessment of Piral Dadhania, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.
He recalls boardroom tensions under its founder, during its merger with French lens-maker Essilor in 2018 and after his death four years later.
But the latest dispute is unusually personal.
During his podcast appearance, Leonardo Maria described growing up surrounded by private jets, chefs, nannies and bodyguards, and recalled being thrown out of the family home at 18 over a girlfriend and discussed his past drug use.
His romantic exploits were equally colourful: he boasted that the 2000 women he had slept with were mostly won over by singing Enrique Iglesias’s Hero.
It is a remarkable portrait of the gilded life of the son of the self-made entrepreneur who rose from a grim early life in a Milanese orphanage to become one of Italy’s richest men.
Del Vecchio founded Luxottica in 1961, transforming a small spectacles workshop in Agordo, in the Veneto region of north-east Italy, into a global giant through acquisitions and licensing deals.
The merger with France’s Essilor in 2018 created a business with brands including Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol.
But his complicated personal life would prove harder to untangle after he died of pneumonia in 2022.
Ownership of Delfin, the Luxembourg holding company that controls roughly a third of EssilorLuxottica, was divided into eight equal stakes.
His six children each inherited 12.5 per cent, alongside widow Nicoletta Zampillo and her son from a previous marriage, Rocco Basilico.
Strict rules governing major decisions have since left the heirs struggling to agree on dividends, ownership and Delfin’s investments.
Leonardo Maria attempted to buy the stakes of two siblings, Luca and Paola, for around €10 billion earlier this year, potentially tripling his holding to 37.5 per cent.
Milleri supported the plan, but Romolo Bardin, the Delfin chief executive, opposed the holding company’s involvement in financing it. The proposal failed to win sufficient backing.
Within months, Leonardo Maria had turned against Milleri.
He resigned as EssilorLuxottica’s chief strategy officer and Ray-Ban chairman in August, complaining that management had grown distant from employees.
“This is not the Luxottica I grew up in,” he wrote in his resignation letter.
Milleri said in a recent interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica that he was “deeply sorry” about Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio’s departure from the company.
“I tried to help him in every possible way, including during the complex transaction involving the purchase of Delfin shares,” Milleri said. “I understand his situation and hope it can be resolved soon. My affection for someone I have known since the day of his baptism cannot change, even during such an emotional period.”
He also defended the company’s performance under his leadership, which added €3 billion in sales this year.
“Twelve years ago, it was mainly an eyewear company generating €7 billion in revenue and employing 85,000 people,” he said. “Today, we are approaching €30 billion in revenue, with 220,000 employees and activities that span eyewear, vision care, medical technology and hearing solutions.”
The reversal was striking. As recently as March, he had publicly backed Milleri as his father’s chosen successor.
Leonardo Maria has spoken of promising to defend his father’s wishes as he stood by his coffin. Yet it was his father who entrusted Milleri with running the business.
Alfredo De Massis, a professor of family business at IMD Business School and the University of Chieti-Pescara, believes the contradiction reflects a classic struggle between heirs who want control and a professional manager appointed to exercise it.
Meanwhile, EssilorLuxottica’s fortunes on the stock market have taken a dramatic turn.
Shares soared last year as investors became excited about its partnership with Facebook owner Meta, which is turning Ray-Ban sunglasses into AI-powered devices capable of taking photographs, answering questions and translating conversations.
But enthusiasm faded as investors worried that smart glasses would be less profitable than conventional eyewear, while Google and Samsung prepared competing products.
Jelena Sokolova, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, says investors had allowed their excitement to get ahead of the company’s prospects.
“I did see shares as overvalued last year, for instance, on all this AI optimism,” she says.
The subsequent sell-off wiped almost half the value from EssilorLuxottica’s shares at its lowest point, giving Leonardo Maria ammunition against Milleri.
But Dadhania believes the chief executive has been unfairly blamed. “The core business has performed remarkably well,” he says.
Others remain cautious. Deutsche Bank warned this month that investors were still expecting too much from EssilorLuxottica, questioning the prospects of AI glasses.
But Tuesday’s trading update offered Milleri a powerful response to his critics.
Sales rose 9 per cent to €7.49 billion in the three months to September, beating analysts’ forecasts. Its traditional eyewear and medical-technology business continued to grow, while sales of smart glasses and other wearable devices jumped 20 per cent.
Milleri and Paul du Saillant, the deputy chief executive, said: “Quarter after quarter, our Company continues to demonstrate the strength of its unique model.”
Sokolova says the company also benefits from a process far more dependable than the latest technological craze; people are living longer and more of them need glasses.
‘The momentum from my father has run out.’
Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio
She argues that even if technology companies make smart glasses commonplace, customers will still want fashionable frames, just as luxury watches have survived the arrival of the Apple Watch.
For all the family’s disagreements, analysts see little immediate prospect of Leonardo Maria forcing Milleri from his position.
EssilorLuxottica’s board has publicly reaffirmed its support for the chief executive, who has reshuffled senior management since the heir’s departure.
Asked whether Leonardo Maria could realistically challenge Milleri while the board supports him, Dadhania replies: “I don’t think so.”
Leonardo Maria did question Milleri’s reappointment in 2027 in a September interview with Corriere della Sera and discussed finding a successor, although he also qualified this by saying: “Nobody has said Milleri must leave.”
Delfin has meanwhile reportedly explored buying back shares from some heirs, potentially reducing the number of beneficiaries from eight to six, easing the inheritance deadlock.
Sokolova suggests the heirs may ultimately have to reconcile themselves to a more limited role, collecting the returns from their father’s business rather than directing its operations.
For De Massis, the family’s greatest challenge, the real test of succession, is not deciding who gets the money. Rather, it is ensuring that the business survives the struggle “to create value for future generations”.
Telegraph, London
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