Ray-Ban's billionaire owner Leonardo Del Vecchio passes away at 87

Leonardo Del Vecchio, the Italian entrepreneur who started with a tiny optics workshop in the Dolomite mountains and ended up as the undisputed world leader in eyewear, has died. He was 87.
 

His death was reported by Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Monday. A spokesman for Del Vecchio wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Raised in a Milan orphanage, Del Vecchio struck out from the northern city to set up shop in the town of Agordo, in the Alps north of Venice, starting off as a small supplier of frame parts to local eyeglass makers. 

His company, EssilorLuxottica, rode a series of acquisitions to eventually become the world leader in the industry. Globally recognized names Ray-Ban and Oakley were among the scores of eyewear brands Del Vecchio bought on his way to the top. 

Del Vecchio’s net worth was $25.7 billion as of June 1, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

He held a controlling 32% stake in EssilorLuxottica, the French-Italian eyewear giant that resulted from the 2018 merger of Luxottica with French lens giant Essilor. The company, which makes frames for luxury houses like Armani and Prada in addition to owning brands like Ray-Ban, has more than 180,000 employees, operations spanning the globe and a foothold in the luxury and medical technology sectors. 

EssilorLuxottica is both the world’s top eyeglass retailer and its biggest producer of corrective lenses. 

Shy and Secretive
 

Shy and secretive by nature, Del Vecchio spent decades carefully avoiding the media spotlight. 

During a rare conversation with a reporter earlier this year, the tycoon was asked how he built his empire. “I’ve always strived to be the best at everything I do -- that’s it,” he said. Describing the drive that took him to the top, he said simply, “I could never get enough.”

In addition to a controlling stake in EssilorLuxottica, Delfin also had holdings in Italian financial companies such as Mediobanca SpA, Assicurazioni Generali SpA and UniCredit SpA. 

Born on May 22, 1935, Del Vecchio grew up poor in Milan. Unable to care for her son, his mother -- widowed five months before he was born -- sent him to an orphanage when he was seven. He began working as an apprentice to a tool and dye manufacturer in Milan when he was 14.

Del Vecchio moved to Agordo in the 1960s and started a small business making eyeglass frames designed by others. He founded Luxottica in 1961 with 14 workers on land he got free from the town in a bid to stimulate the local economy.

Luxottica started to produce its own designs in the late 1960s. In the 1980s, Del Vecchio began buying companies in the US. In 1999, he purchased Ray-Ban for $640 million.

In the early years of his career, Del Vecchio said he “put work before everything else,” dedicating little time to his children. “The factory became my real family,” he said, adding that he had made up for some of the lost time in recent years, spending most days with his extended family in Milan, or at his homes on France’s Cote d’Azur and the island of Antigua.

Del Vecchio’s final goal, he said in one of the last interviews he granted, was to to push EssilorLuxottica into the exclusive club of companies valued at more than 100 billion euros ($107 billion).

He was the biggest shareholder in investment bank Mediobanca SpA, with a stake of just under 20%, and one of the main investors at Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Italy’s top insurer.

He was part of a group of investors that tried unsuccessfully to force out Generali Chief Executive Officer Philippe Donnet in the first half of 2022. At Mediobanca, he periodically clashed over strategy with CEO Alberto Nagel.

Del Vecchio said his skirmishes in the finance industry resulted from thinking big.

“You need to be brave enough to keep doing things, to move forward,” he said.