There are car crash interviews, and then there is Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio’s podcast appearance this week.
This was just the latest episode in a broader corporate drama unfolding at the Franco-Italian company — owner of Ray-Ban, and partner to Meta Platforms Inc. on AI smart glasses — which has contributed to a near halving of its share price in the space of a year. The young Del Vecchio has in effect become an activist stakeholder in his family’s firm, railing against its management and trying to become its most powerful investor. He hoped going on the podcast would show his human side, away from the name and money. Instead he deepened concerns about his judgment and wellbeing. The bizarre spectacle has harmed his campaign, even if his representatives insist otherwise. Delfin owns roughly a third of EssilorLuxottica, as well as hefty stakes in Italian banks and insurers. The holding company’s ownership is split between eight heirs: six children born to three mothers; Leonardo’s widow Nicoletta Zampillo; and Rocco Basilico, her son from a separate marriage. Any big decisions on ownership or strategy must be unanimous. That achieving such a consensus was nigh on impossible suited the patriarch. He wanted EssilorLuxotttica to continue unchanged, helmed by his closest adviser, Francesco Milleri, who also chairs Delfin. Delfin subsequently decided it wouldn’t backstop the transaction. And Leonardo Maria’s half-brother Basilico has proposed a rival deal: separating the core eyewear stake from Delfin’s other financial and insurance holdings, allowing the latter to be sold to raise cash for family members or to reorganize Delfin. He doubled down on his complaints on the podcast, indicating that stepping away from day-to-day management had strengthened his own ability to challenge the company’s current regime. “I am a shareholder. EssilorLuxottica spokespeople declined to comment for this column. We do not believe that this has affected his credibility as a shareholder. His positions, investment decisions and actions in that role should be evaluated on their own merits and substance.”
In the years before his death at 87 in 2022, he put in place a structure at the family’s holding company, Delfin, which would pay out handsome dividends to his heirs but effectively stop them selling out. EssilorLuxottica “has a name, Del Vecchio, and I cannot put my face behind it when salaries are frozen and shares are dropping 50%.
I took a step up, let that be very clear, I didn’t take a step down,” he said. Alongside comments that his father “gave us all but love,” and that “I have filled the gaps I felt with drugs,” he revealed that he had -1 billion in debt, and was selling one of his two yachts. Representatives for Leonardo Maria said the interview was intended to show “a side of him that is not usually visible in the financial and corporate context in which he is normally portrayed.
