Del Vecchio recently amended Delfin’s by-laws to ensure he could designate a successor as chair in the event he ceased to control over 50 per cent of Delfin’s voting rights.

On Tuesday it emerged his choice was Francesco Milleri, Del Vecchio’s right-hand man who over the past decade has gone from an IT consultant at Luxottica to become the chief executive of EssilorLuxottica.

“Together, we invented a phenomenon that did not exist: we immediately realised that glasses, from simple functional objects would become indispensable fashion accessories.”

Giorgio Armani

“The important thing for the family is to remain united to keep control over EssiLux,” Corbetta said.

Delfin also has a 27 per cent stake in Paris-listed Covivio after Del Vecchio in 2018 merged his Italian property firm Beni Stabili with French rival Fonciere des Regions.

Fashion designer Giorgio Armani was among those to pay tribute to Del Vecchio with whom he had worked since the 1980s.

“Together, we invented a phenomenon that did not exist: we immediately realised that glasses, from simple functional objects would become indispensable fashion accessories,” Armani said.

Partly raised in an orphanage, Del Vecchio’s rags-to-riches story mirrored Italy’s own recovery after World War Two.

“A leading figure in Italian business for more than 60 years, Del Vecchio created one of the country’s largest companies from humble beginnings,” Prime Minister Mario Draghi said, calling the entrepreneur “a great Italian”.

Family affair

Of Del Vecchio’s six children, only Zampillo’s son Leonardo Maria holds a role in one of the family companies, heading Luxottica’s Italian retail division.

Claudio, the eldest son born in 1957 and the former CEO of US menswear brand Brooks Brothers, lost his Luxottica board seat in 2015 in a management shake-up instigated by his father.

A long-time investor in bank UniCredit with a 2 per cent stake, Del Vecchio also emerged in recent years as the single biggest shareholder in Mediobanca, of which Delfin owns 19.4 per cent.

Over the past year, Del Vecchio also boosted his stake in Italian insurer Generali to 9.8 per cent, siding with fellow investor Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone in a boardroom battle over leadership that also involved Generali’s top shareholder Mediobanca.

Concerns that Delfin could cut its financial stakes pushed shares in Mediobanca and Generali down 3 per cent on Monday.

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Stefano Caselli, a professor of finance at Milan’s Bocconi University, said Del Vecchio’s heirs may well take a “less activist” approach.

“And we’ll need to see if they’ll keep those stakes at their current size,” he said.

Bloomberg, Reuters