Leonardo Del Vecchio chairman of eyewear maker EssilorLuxottica (ESLOF) and one of Italy’s richest business figures, has died aged 87, the company said on Monday.
“EssilorLuxottica announces today that its chairman has passed away,” the group said in a statement, adding that the board will meet to “determine next steps.”
Del Vecchio went from a childhood in an orphanage to amassing a fortune of tens of billions of euros in one of the most famous stories of Italy’s post-war economic recovery.
“Leonardo Del Vecchio was a great Italian. His story, from an orphanage to the leadership of a business empire, feels like a story from another time. But it is an example for today and tomorrow. RIP,” European Economics Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said on Twitter.
The Italian businessman founded Luxottica in 1961 and built a company that owns the brand ray ban and joined forces with France’s Essilor in a major merger in 2018.
He remained as Executive Chairman of EssilorLuxottica until December 2020, when he handed over the day-to-day leadership of the company to Chief Executive Francesco Milleri. He had personally supported Milleri as head of the Franco-Italian bespectacled giant when the merged group was created.
Del Vecchio’s influence extended beyond his own business, and by the end of 2021, he was the second richest man in Italy behind Giovanni Ferrero of the Nutella manufacturing group, according to Forbes.
Its holding company Delfin is the largest shareholder in Italian financial services group Mediobanca and has a stake of just under 10% in Italy’s largest insurance company Generali. It also owns around 7% of the real estate company Covivio, listed in Paris and Milan.
“With the death of Del Vecchio, Milan loses one of the most iconic figures in its recent history,” Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said on Twitter.
Mediobanca shares are down more than 4% after the reports, Generali is down nearly 2.5%, while EssilorLuxottica – in which Delfin holds a 32% controlling stake – was unchanged at just under 148 euros a share.
Source: CNN Brasil
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