Delfin: Italy’s serpentine succession drama

The squabbling heirs running Delfin, one of Italy’s biggest companies, have “trumped” the television series Succession, says The Times, proving that “truth can be stranger than fiction”.

The hit TV drama featured four siblings vying for control of their family empire. At Delfin – the €55 billion holding company behind Ray-Ban’s owner EssilorLuxottica – there are eight heirs battling it out. And there’s more at stake than fancy eyewear.

Delfin is a big financial power player and has substantial holdings in a slew of Italian banks and other financial institutions – including UniCredit, Mediobanca, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and the insurer Generali – as well as de facto control of the international property group Covivio.

It is thus “one of corporate Italy’s top power brokers”, says the Financial Times, and this paralysing family feud has sent ripples across the country’s financial sector at a pivotal moment. Italian banks are currently waging an internecine chess game of consolidation. The outcome at Delfin could swing the balance.

Delfin founder’s best laid plans…

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, says the Luxembourg Times. The family patriarch, Leonardo Del Vecchio – who built the largest eyewear company in the world from a small optical workshop in the Dolomite foothills – “spent years designing a governance structure” to protect his legacy before his death in 2022.

He hoped to head off disputes by dividing the family holding company equally between eight heirs: his six children by three different wives, his widow and her son Rocco Basilico.

Yet from the outset, there were squabbles over everything from dividends to the future of the group’s portfolio.

Matters came to a head this year, when Del Vecchio’s fourth child – 31-year-old Leonardo Maria – a “keen DJ… avid Ferrari collector” and “mainstay in gossip magazines” – started flexing his muscles, says The Times.

He proposed cementing his control over the group by buying out two of his siblings.

For a time it looked as though “Leonardino” might get his way, says The Observer. But he hadn’t bargained on opposition from key members of the EssilorLuxottica board – notably chairman and CEO Francesco Milleri – and his LA-based stepbrother Rocco, who is “credited” with arranging “Ray-Ban’s controversial smart-glasses partnership with Meta”.

Their critique, says the FT, was that the younger Leonardo was “not his father” and they warned against concentrating too much power in his hands.

The dispute rapidly reached courtrooms in Italy and Luxembourg.

While Rocco Basilico and another half-sibling challenged the proposed sale of Luca and Paola Del Vecchio’s stakes, Leonardo Maria “contested Basilico’s entitlement to his 12.5% holding”.

Beating a retreat

After a punishing stand-off, it looks as though Leonardo Maria has conceded defeat, says Il Sore 24 Ore.

This week, he quit as chairman of Ray-Ban and chief strategy officer of EssilorLuxottica – claiming he intended to devote himself to new entrepreneurial projects. His parting shot, says Euronews, is that the company his father founded has “lost its soul”.

“I keep talking to people in the company. I did it when I was a store manager and I have never stopped doing it,” wrote the founder’s son. But today, “the enthusiasm is not what it was. The sense of belonging is not what it was. The distance can be felt. And people sense it before the markets. Always.”

The departure of LMDV, as he is known in the company, from his executive roles may or may not end “the infighting at Delfin”, says The Times. But it is “a warning to Italy’s legions of family firms facing generational change”.

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