June 28, 2022: -On Monday, the chairman of spectacles maker EssilorLuxottica and one of Italy’s richest business formations, Leonardo del Vecchio, passed away at 87, his company said.<\/p>

\u201cEssilorLuxottica declares today that its chairman has passed away,” the group said in a statement, counting that the board would meet to “determine the future steps.”<\/p>

Del Vecchio increased from a childhood in an orphanage to amass a fortune of tens of billions of euros in one of the huge famous rags-to-riches stories of the post-war financial recovery of Italy.<\/p>

“Leonardo Del Vecchio was a huge Italian. His story, from orphanage to leadership of a business empire, looks like such a story from another time. But it is a great instance for today and tomorrow. RIP,” European Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni tweeted.<\/p>

The Italian businessman-based Luxottica in 1961 built up a company that owns the Ray-Ban brand and combined forces with France’s Essilor in a significant merger in 2018.<\/p>

He remained executive chairman of EssilorLuxottica till December 2020, when he handed the day-to-day leadership of the company to Chief Executive Francesco Milleri. He had supported Milleri as head of the Franco-Italian eyewear giant when the merged group was made.<\/p>

Del Vecchio’s influence extended beyond his business, and at the end of 2021, he was Italy’s second-richest man behind Giovanni Ferrero of the Nutella-making group, according to Forbes.<\/p>

His Delfin holding company is a huge shareholder in Italian financial services group Mediobanca and has a stake of just less than 10% in Italy’s largest insurer Generali. It owns approximately 7% of the real estate company Covivio, listed in Paris and Milan.<\/p>

“With the passing of Del Vecchio, Milan loses one of the most emblematic figures of its most delinquent history,” Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala told on Twitter.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t