Founder's Son to Exit Oakley Parent co' EssilorLuxottica Amid Rift With CEO Milleri Over Family Succession

Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, the 31-year-old son of the late Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio, is stepping down from his management roles at EssilorLuxottica — chairman of Ray-Ban and chief strategy officer of the eyewear and eyecare giant — effective August 31, following months of escalating tension with CEO Francesco Milleri over control of the family's holding company.

The resignation and the letter behind it

The news was first reported by Italian financial daily MF-Milano Finanza and subsequently confirmed by EssilorLuxottica in a brief statement. Del Vecchio informed the company's board of his decision in a letter, portions of which have circulated in Italian media, in which he criticized current corporate management as "distant" and "impersonal," calling for the people who work within the company to be "put back at the center" of its culture — the way, he wrote, things operated at Luxottica two decades ago, under his father's direct stewardship. Del Vecchio described his father as someone who could be demanding but maintained a genuinely close relationship with the business and its employees, someone who understood what was happening on factory floors, in stores and in offices, and who knew when to intervene and when to support people. EssilorLuxottica, in turn, thanked Del Vecchio for his contribution to the group's growth and to carrying forward the strategic vision established by its founder.

Del Vecchio was explicit that his departure does not represent an exit from the family's involvement in the company altogether: he will continue to exercise his rights as a shareholder through Delfin, the Luxembourg-based holding company that holds a 32.4% stake in EssilorLuxottica and functions as the family's central financial vehicle, in which he holds a 12.5% stake.

What triggered the split

At the root of the rift is a blocked succession maneuver. In February 2026, Leonardo Maria attempted to break a long-running impasse among the eight heirs to his father's estate by proposing to buy out the combined 25% stake in Delfin held by his siblings Luca and Paola Del Vecchio, for roughly €10 billion — a deal that would have raised his own stake in the holding company to 37.5% and made him its largest individual shareholder. The plan was approved by Delfin's shareholder assembly in April by a vote of six to two, but drew opposition from his half-brother Rocco Basilico and from Claudio Del Vecchio, who subsequently challenged the validity of the approval process before Luxembourg authorities; Delfin dismissed that legal challenge as unfounded. The two sides announced a truce and withdrew their respective legal actions in June, but tensions flared again weeks later when Basilico renewed his accusations against the plan.

The financing side of the buyout proved equally contentious. According to Italian reporting, the roughly €10 billion share purchase was to be part of a wider financing package worth around €11 billion, and required a letter of patronage — a form of financial guarantee — to accompany the loan. In June, Delfin's board rejected that patronage request by majority vote, over concerns that the structure would leave the holding company excessively exposed to a single shareholder. Among the options reportedly discussed for raising liquidity without diluting the family's EssilorLuxottica stake was monetizing part of Delfin's other major financial holdings, which include significant positions in Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena and insurer Assicurazioni Generali.

That rejection put Leonardo Maria directly at odds with Milleri, who chairs Delfin in addition to serving as EssilorLuxottica's CEO, and who had reportedly backed Leonardo Maria's buyout plan even as he was outvoted on the patronage letter by the wider Delfin board. It was that unresolved standoff, still simmering since June, that ultimately led to Monday's resignation announcement.

A leadership void — by design

Milleri, an engineer who was hand-picked by the elder Del Vecchio to run the group in his final years, has served as CEO of Luxottica since 2017 and as CEO of the merged EssilorLuxottica entity since the 2020 combination with French lens maker Essilor. With Leonardo Maria's departure, EssilorLuxottica is left without a single member of the Del Vecchio family in an operational management role — an outcome Italian media noted the founder himself had reportedly favored on several occasions before his death in 2022. Sources close to Del Vecchio's own investment vehicle, LMDV Capital, characterized the move not as a withdrawal from the group but as a "governance clean-up" — freeing him to engage with the company purely as a shareholder through Delfin, without the constraints of a formal executive title. Del Vecchio's resignation also follows that of his half-brother Rocco Basilico, who stepped down from his own role at the group last year amid similar family tensions.

Beyond Ray-Ban

The management shake-up touches one of the most valuable consumer brand portfolios in eyewear. Beyond Ray-Ban, EssilorLuxottica's owned brands include Oakley, Persol, Oliver Peoples and Costa Del Mar, alongside retail chains Sunglass Hut, LensCrafters and Pearle Vision, and a wide roster of designer eyewear licenses spanning Giorgio Armani, Chanel and Burberry. As the world's largest eyewear and lens manufacturer, the group's ownership structure and succession planning carry outsized weight not just for the Del Vecchio family's roughly $55 billion Delfin holding — which also controls significant stakes in Monte dei Paschi, Generali, UniCredit and French property group Covivio — but for a swath of the global optical and sports eyewear retail landscape that runs through its brands and licenses.

What comes next

For now, EssilorLuxottica's day-to-day operations remain under Milleri, whose management approach was the explicit target of Del Vecchio's parting critique. Whether Leonardo Maria's continued presence as a Delfin shareholder — without an executive title, but still holding 12.5% of the family vehicle — reopens the succession question in a different form remains to be seen. The unresolved division among the eight heirs over how to execute their father's estate, more than four years after his death, suggests the governance question at the heart of Europe's leading eyewear empire is far from settled.