Essilux shares fall in Paris amid Delfin turmoil. Decisive shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor)- The internal dispute at Delfin, the controlling shareholder, is weighing on the sharesEssilorluxottica in Paris on the eve of the Luxembourg-based holding company’s decisive shareholders’ meeting. The company’s share price is the worst performer on the CAC 40, at its lowest level since October 2023 and effectively halved since last November, when it had briefly touched €320 during intraday trading.

Over the weekend, the latest clash between Leonardo Del Vecchio’s heirs unfolded: first, it emerged that Rocco Basilico had written to Delfin’s board of directors, highlighting the ‘climate of intense tension, perhaps even more intense than last year’s’, and denouncing that ‘the relationship of trust between the shareholders and the board of directors has been undermined’, to the extent that ‘today we find ourselves once again in a deadlock that risks jeopardising Delfin’s future’. Basilico therefore proposes that Delfin repurchase ‘the shareholdings of those shareholders who no longer wish to remain in the company, financing this through the sale of its financial holdings’, namely the stakes in UniCredit, Generali and MPS, or by distributing them directly to the shareholders. Furthermore, to calculate how much Delfin is ‘worth’ and thus compensate those wishing to exit, Basilico proposes valuing the financial holdings at 100 per cent of their market value, as they are ‘easily realisable’, whilst for EssilorLuxottica, a 25 per cent discount would be applied to the stock market price, a percentage he describes as ‘at the upper end of the discounts generally applied to holding companies’.

This proposal was swiftly met with a flat “no” from sources close to Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, who maintain that “no heir would ever sell the family business at a discount”. Finally, there was an exchange of correspondence between the lawyers of the two heirs ahead of tomorrow’s shareholders’ meeting: a letter from the law firm L&B Partners warns Delfin’s board of directors to “ensure that” Basilico to the meeting, whilst Basilico’s lawyers denounce the “utterly unlawful pressure” exerted by Leonardo Maria.