Del Vecchio Heirs Take €10 Billion Ray-Ban Fortune Dispute to Luxembourg Court

One of Europe's largest family fortunes — the multibillion-euro empire behind Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica — is being fought over in Luxembourg, where a court has been asked to rule on a contested plan to reshape control of the Del Vecchio family's holding company, Delfin.

The dispute pits Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, a son of the group's late founder, against his stepbrother Rocco Basilico, and it has turned the Grand Duchy into the legal battleground for a succession that has divided the heirs since 2022. At issue is who commands the vehicle that sits atop the world's biggest eyewear company and a web of Italian financial stakes.

A fortune domiciled in the Grand Duchy

Delfin S.à r.l. is registered at 7 Rue de la Chapelle in Luxembourg City and was founded in 2006. According to a Wikipedia compilation of its filings, it is EssilorLuxottica's largest shareholder, with roughly 32 percent of the shares and about 31 percent of the voting rights, and it also holds stakes in Mediobanca (19.74 percent), Monte dei Paschi di Siena (17.5 percent), the insurer Assicurazioni Generali (about 10 percent), the property group Covivio (28 percent) and UniCredit. Its net assets exceeded €55 billion at the end of 2025; Leonardo Maria has put the figure at around €56 billion. EssilorLuxottica alone is worth more than $100 billion on the market.

When founder Leonardo Del Vecchio, who built Luxottica from a small workshop into a global group, died in June 2022, his will split Delfin into eight equal stakes of 12.5 percent each. The holders are his widow, Nicoletta Zampillo; children Claudio, Marisa, Paola, Leonardo Maria, Luca and Clemente Del Vecchio; and Basilico, Zampillo's son from an earlier marriage. The company is chaired by Francesco Milleri, who is also EssilorLuxottica's chief executive.

The buyout that split the family

Leonardo Maria, aged 31, wants to buy the combined 25 percent held by his siblings Luca and Paola, a move that would lift his own stake from 12.5 percent to about 37.5 percent and make him Delfin's single largest shareholder. The transaction, valued at roughly €10 billion, would be structured as a leveraged buyout backed by a pool of banks, with the debt serviced through dividends from Delfin's holdings.

I have been very clear I am willing to buy their stakes in order to become Delfin's main shareholder, close the outstanding issues around my father's estate and execute my father's will.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Leonardo Maria said he was “close to agreeing a price” and insisted he did not intend to “make a power move” but rather to “build trust after four years of disputes.” He told the paper that roughly €7 billion in reserves could support an extraordinary dividend followed by annual payouts of more than €1 billion.

At an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on 27 April 2026, Delfin's owners approved the transfer of the 25 percent stake to Leonardo Maria, with six of the eight shareholders in favour, and separately backed a dividend policy to distribute 80 percent of annual net profit for 2025, 2026 and 2027, supported by seven of the eight.

What the Luxembourg court is being asked to decide

Basilico, who like Leonardo Maria holds 12.5 percent, took the fight to a Luxembourg court in May, asking it to overturn the April resolutions. His central argument is procedural but consequential:

He says the meeting cleared the stake transfer using a 75 percent threshold, when Delfin's statutes require more than 88 percent for transfers of shares to a third party.

Under that higher bar, his 12.5 percent would have been enough to block the sale on its own.

He also challenges the dividend measure, arguing it was not on the original agenda and would bind the company to distribute at least 80 percent of net profit once the purchase completes.

Delfin has called the challenge unfounded. Running alongside it is a separate, related question before the Luxembourg courts: whether Basilico holds full ownership of his stake or only its bare ownership, which determines whether he can exercise the voting rights attached to it. Leonardo Maria had, in turn, filed an action in Milan seeking to exclude Basilico from Delfin's shareholder register.

A truce, but not yet a settlement

On 4 June the two stepbrothers reached a provisional agreement to drop their cross-lawsuits — Basilico to withdraw the Luxembourg challenge and Leonardo Maria to abandon the Milan action — a step that would clear the path for the buyout. Both sides cautioned that a final deal had not been sealed and that details remained to be worked out.

Ahead of a Delfin general meeting on 30 June, Basilico wrote to the board with a rival proposal: that the company buy back the shares of heirs who no longer wished to remain, financing the move by selling some of its financial holdings. Leonardo Maria rejected the idea of parting with EssilorLuxottica assets at a discount.

Whatever the outcome, the episode underscores a quieter truth about the Grand Duchy. Luxembourg has long been the discreet legal home of many of Europe's largest family fortunes, its holding structures prized for flexibility and continuity. When a billionaire dynasty falls out, those same structures — and the courts that govern them — become the arena in which the fortune's future is decided.