The family dispute paralysing one of corporate Italy’s top power brokers
Conflict between Leonardo Del Vecchio’s heirs leaves Delfin in stasis as €55bn group’s portfolio is reshaped by consolidation
Leonardo Del Vecchio spent years designing a governance structure to protect his business empire after his death.
But the safeguards he put in place are now paralysing the €55bn holding company at the heart of the family fortune, as a dispute among his heirs divides the board.
Under Del Vecchio, Delfin became one of Europe’s most influential family investment vehicles, using its multibillion-euro stakes in eyewear group EssilorLuxottica, insurer Generali and lenders Mediobanca and UniCredit to shape corporate strategy across Italy’s financial and industrial sectors.
Today the group struggles to take strategic decisions, limiting its ability to deploy capital, reshape its portfolio or play the activist role that helped set Italy’s financial agenda for years.
“This has important knock-on effects across Italian capitalism as a whole,” said Alfredo De Massis, professor of entrepreneurship and family business at IMD and at the University of Chieti-Pescara.
After Del Vecchio’s death in 2022, ownership of Delfin was divided into eight equal stakes held by his six children, his widow and her son by a previous marriage. The shareholders have since argued over everything from dividends and executive pay to the future of the group’s portfolio.
The depth of the deadlock became clear in June when Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio sought the board’s backing for a proposal to buy out two of his siblings’ 12.5 per cent stakes in an effort to take his own holding to 37.5 per cent.
The 31-year-old told the FT in March that consolidating the stakes would end years of family tensions and create a more stable ownership structure. But the effort split the two executives entrusted by Del Vecchio with overseeing the empire, opening a new front in the hostility.
Delfin chief executive Romolo Bardin opposed the holding company backing the bid, while chair Francesco Milleri, who also serves as chief executive of EssilorLuxottica, supported it.
Milleri said in April that making Leonardo Maria the dominant shareholder would “simplify” Delfin’s governance and help break years of deadlock. Another person close to Delfin, however, stressed that Leonardo Maria “is not his father” and warned against concentrating too much power in his hands.
Leonardo Maria’s failure to gain the board’s backing has all but ended his attempt to become the group’s dominant shareholder. But at Delfin’s annual meeting this summer, which he boycotted, shareholders also failed to agree on higher dividends or on allowing family members to transfer their stakes into personal holding vehicles.
The disputes have reached courtrooms in Italy and Luxembourg.
Rocco Basilico, the son of Leonardo Del Vecchio’s widow Nicoletta Zampillo from a previous marriage and Leonardo Maria’s half-brother, challenged resolutions approving the proposed sale of Luca and Paola Del Vecchio’s stakes. Leonardo Maria then contested Basilico’s entitlement to his 12.5 per cent holding.
In a letter before the annual meeting, Basilico said the family’s “stalemate” threatened Delfin’s future. He proposed offering shareholders an exit by selling some financial investments while preserving the EssilorLuxottica stake. In a response to the letter, shared with the media, Leonardo Maria said such a move would undermine his father’s legacy.
Born in 1935, Leonardo Del Vecchio rose from a Milan orphanage to build Luxottica from a component supplier in the 1960s into the world’s largest eyewear group, acquiring brands including Ray-Ban and Oakley before merging it with France’s Essilor in 2018.
But he groomed none of his children as his successor. Instead, his longstanding adviser Milleri became EssilorLuxottica chief executive and, after Del Vecchio’s death, succeeded him as Delfin chair.
Leonardo Maria and Basilico could hardly be more different. Unlike his publicity-shy father, Leonardo Maria has cultivated a high public profile through the investments made by his family office in publishing, restaurants and clubs, while a turbulent private life has made him a fixture of Italy’s tabloids.
“I was born rich and this is seen as a liability in Italy [but] there is a difference between inheriting wealth and assuming responsibility,” he said while accepting an honorary degree in July. “An inheritance is given to you, responsibility is something you go out and claim.”
Basilico, his elder by four years, projects the opposite image, described by people who know the family as intensely private and understated. Based in the US, he recently left his role at EssilorLuxottica, where, as wearables chief, he played a central role in the group’s smart glasses partnership with Meta.
Leonardo Maria has described Milleri as the “custodian” of his father’s industrial legacy and the best-placed executive to ensure continuity. He told the FT in March he “fully trusted Milleri to carry out his father’s vision”.
But Milleri is in an increasingly difficult position as he seeks to navigate the family discord while leading EssilorLuxottica, whose Franco-Italian governance has long required careful management.
Delfin’s dividend policy highlights the discord. The group distributes to the eight shareholders only the mandatory 10 per cent of its roughly €1.5bn in annual profits.
People close to Delfin say higher payouts would give Leonardo Maria cash to help service the roughly €1bn in bank debt accumulated through his investments outside Delfin. Other shareholders, including some seeking an exit, have resisted higher distributions, treating dividends as part of a broader bargaining process over control.
The argument is becoming more urgent as consolidation reshapes Italian banking.
Delfin owns 10 per cent of Generali, almost 3 per cent of UniCredit and 17.5 per cent of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, having acquired the MPS stake largely in exchange for its Mediobanca holding when the Tuscan bank took over its rival last year.
If Intesa Sanpaolo succeeds in an effort to take over MPS, Delfin would be left with a 3-4 per cent stake in Italy’s largest bank. But as MPS chief Luigi Lovaglio explores alternative deals to fend off the hostile bid, Delfin’s support could also prove decisive in determining the outcome.
Alternatively, a hurried disposal of stakes regarded by Rome as strategic national assets would be politically difficult. But analysts say a holding company without a coherent strategy beyond EssilorLuxottica may eventually have to simplify its portfolio.
“Delfin may prefer to divest, give itself a clearer identity, and also reduce its exposure to politically sensitive files, because Leonardo Del Vecchio is no longer there,” De Massis said. “He has no clones within the family.”
The MPS stake has also become a growing liability for Milleri. Milan prosecutors are investigating him, alongside Lovaglio and investor Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, over alleged market manipulation and obstruction of regulators in relation to MPS’s 2025 takeover of Mediobanca. All three have denied wrongdoing.
“That risks turning Delfin’s stake in the Tuscan bank from a strategic lever into a source of legal and reputational exposure for the man charged with preserving Del Vecchio’s legacy,” said a Milan-based lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
For the heirs, asset sales could provide much-needed liquidity and loosen the ties that bind them through Delfin. For corporate Italy, however, the more important question is whether one of its pivotal investors can recover the authority to make long-term choices.
Del Vecchio’s heirs “are very different from their late father”, said De Massis. “So the structure also needs to change . . . Otherwise, there is a disconnect.”