Delfin, holding company value falls to 40 billion

The fall in the stock markets reduces the value of EssilorLuxottica and, as a consequence, impacts the value of Delfin, the holding company in which the Del Vecchio family has a stake and which has been at the centre of a complex reorganisation for the past few months.

EssilorLuxottica has retraced significantly on the stock market since early 2026, bringing its capitalisation, which was hovering around EUR 125 billion in October, close to EUR 90 billion. The valuation remains well above the 60 billion marked at the time of founder Leonardo Del Vecchio's death in 2022. The fact remains that in three months the company has burned through 35 billion capitalisation. The drop in the Med Tech giant's share price is explained above all by the general weakness of the markets, but according to some, also by the imminent entry of new competitors on the market for AI-integrated glasses. The fact is that the fall in share prices has evidently also eroded the value of the holding company Delfin.

As of last October, the Luxembourg company owned by the Del Vecchio family was worth something like 55 billion. This is considering both the industrial assets, i.e. the 32% stake in EssilorLuxottica, and the financial holdings, which include Generali (10%), UniCredit (2.7%) and Mps (17.9%).

Considering the current quotations and the ifinancial share package, today the Luxembourg company, according to some estimates, is trading at around EUR 40 billion. In other words, it has lost around 15 billion in value in five months. At the time of the founder's demise Delfin was worth 25 billion, about half that.

The downsizing of the holding company's value comes at a very delicate moment for the Delfin-EssilorLuxottica system. Delfin's shareholders, represented by Leonardo Del Vecchio's children, Claudio, Paola, Marisa, Leonardo Maria, Luca and Clemente, and his wife Nicoletta Zampillo together with her first son, Rocco Basilico, have been working for some time to find an agreement capable of setting up a new structure and redesigning the governance of the holding company. Almost four years after the death of Luxottica's founder, Leonardo Del Vecchio, the various attempts that have been made so far have come to nothing. The latest avenue being pursued in recent months is to break the deadlock by means of a share reorganisation capable of delivering a relative majority shareholding into the hands of a single shareholder and thus creating the conditions for unblocking the decision-making deadlock that has long governed the financial company's shareholders' meeting. With this in mind, Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, the fourth son of Luxottica's founder, has sent Delfin the proposal to exercise pre-emption and thus the will to take over Luca and Paola's 12.5% each, a path envisaged by the latter's articles of association. Luca and Paola had in fact asked in recent months to transfer their holdings to a personal company. Hence Leonardo Maria's move, which, if completed, would make him Delfin's first single shareholder, with a total stake of 37.5%.