Essilor and Luxottica announce the finalisation of their merger

Essilor and Luxottica have announced the finalisation of their merger made possible by the contribution of the Luxottica shares held by Delfin, the holding of Leonardo Del Vecchio, the founder and head of the Italian group, effective from October 1.

Delfin provided Essilor with all of its Luxottica shares which represented 62.42 percent of the group’s capital. The shares were provided on the basis of approximately 0.46 Essilor shares for one Luxottica share, according to the transaction prospectus.

Following this first stage of the deal, the merged business will be named EssilorLuxottica and will launch a public exchange offer for the remaining Luxottica shares in circulation as per Italian law, according to the business itself.

The exchange offer will run from October 29 to November 27. However, it may take until March 2019 to recover all of the Luxottica shares.

The first general meeting for EssilorLuxottica will be held on November 29. The marriage between the French business Essilor, a world leader in ophthalmic lenses, and Luxottica, a giant in the luxury sunglass industry, was first announced in January 2017. However, the engagement lasted longer than expected due to delays waiting for approval from various regulatory authorities which had never before come across such as large merger in the optics industry. The last barrier was finally lifted at the end of July when Chinese authorities gave the deal the green light.

EssilorLuxottica is expected to glean an annual revenue total of around €16 billion ($18.5 billion) based on the 2017 annual results of the two groups. This gives EssilorLuxottica a market valuation of around €50 billion.

Essilor and Luxottica announce the finalisation of their merger

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