A brotherly reconciliation worth €10bn
The heirs to EssilorLuxottica — owner of Ray Ban — have been embroiled in a legal dispute over the structure of holding company Delfin (Giorgio Trovato/Unsplash)
Anyone with siblings knows that getting on with your relatives isn’t always easy.
For the offspring of prominent families, however, the struggle is not just for parental attention and affection, personal space or keeping your mouth shut at Christmas dinners; and sometimes a reconciliation can come at a high price – specifically, around €10bn ($11.4bn).
That was the case with half-brothers Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio and Rocco Basilico, heirs to the EssilorLuxottica empire left by the Italian eyewear magnate Leonardo Del Vecchio, who passed away in June 2022.
Del Vecchio proved far-sighted enough to split his estate equally between his eight direct heirs —- his wife, his six children, including Leonardo Maria, and stepson Rocco — to prevent any squabbles. Each member of the extended family received a 12.5 per cent stake in Luxottica’s Luxembourg-based private holding company Delfin, valued at around €25bn.
Unfortunately, the family patriarch was still unable to prevent the inevitable, classic power struggle between two of his super-rich sons.
In April, Delfin’s annual general meeting provoked Basilico’s outrage when shareholders approved both a massive increase in dividends (from 10 per cent to 80 per cent of profits) and the transfer to Leonardo Maria of the entire stake in the holding company previously held by his other siblings, Luca and Paola, as part of a leveraged buyout worth around €10bn.
In response, Rocco lodged an urgent court appeal in Luxembourg to block the transaction, arguing that the agreement breached company law. Leonardo Maria, on the other hand, had initiated legal proceedings that could have excluded Basilico from the shareholder structure.
For now, the brothers seem to have buried the hatchet: a few weeks ago, they announced that they had reached a provisional agreement on the reorganisation of the company and stated that they intended to withdraw their legal action. A truce or a ceasefire? Only time will tell.
