A great passion for life, for women, for love has always accompanied Leonardo Del Vecchio in his extraordinary entrepreneurial path. The founder of Luxottica, who died in Milan at the age of 87, had a sentimental and family life as troubled as it was full.
Of the Old Man he had six children with three different women. There first wife, Luciana Nervowas close to him in the early sixties, when Luxottica was still a small factory. From this first marriage Claudio, Maria and Paolo were born. There second wife, Nicoletta ZampilloMilanese, elegant, severe, very feared, with whom he had Leonardo Maria (who recently got married), it was maybe the true great love of Leonardo, of those who “do not finish, make immense rounds and then come back”, to quote Antonello Venditti. She was the daughter of one of the first Luxottica eyewear representatives for Milan and Lombardy, she had a marriage that ended with the brilliant financier Paolo Basilico. The wedding with Del Vecchio was celebrated in 1997: she was 38, he 62. The marriage shattered with the start of the new millennium, when he fell in love with Sabina Grossi, investor relator who works in Luxottica. From her divorce, Zampillo obtained Villa Mondadori, a splendid 1920s residence, two thousand square meters between via XX Settembre and via Tamburini in Milan. A house then sold in 2008 for 24 million euros.
Sabina and Leonardo, who never got married, had two children: Luca and Clementestill minors. He then left her and he is back in the arms of Nicoletta, the only woman who according to the usual well-informed was able to really make his heart beat. So much so that in the 2010 he remarried her. It is rumored that after the second marriage, Zampillo, first of all, asked for (and obtained) the change of the furnishings of the Moneikos, the beloved yacht moored in Monte Carlo where the owner of Luxottica spent his free time, without him batting an eye. . In 2014, then, it was said that she had claimed 25 percent of her family holding company for herself. Then investors feared an onslaught of relatives on the company and the stock on the stock market plummeted. Nicoletta defended herself in an interview with Corriere della Sera: «My role? Only one: the mother of my children and my husband’s wife. My role is all here. I have nothing to do with Luxottica and reading what is written makes me very embittered. Not only for what people say about me without knowing anything: I am an honest person, I come from a splendid family with deep values ​​». Del Vecchio and Zampillo lived in Milan, in Palazzo Vidia, a large house built in the 1920s.
Despite the stormy love life, Leonardo Del Vecchio has always planned everything so that business and affections did not conflict: organized the control of Delfin, the Luxembourg holding company to which the whole empire belongs, so that every strategic decision is taken with the agreement of all three branches of the family. Already in 2015, Mr. Luxottica was more than clear in an interview with la Republic: “In my opinion the children must not have top management responsibilities in the company and must not sit on the board of directors. The reason is very simple, you can fire a manager, even if it costs a lot, a child cannot. My six children have the bare ownership of 12.5% ​​each of Delfin, my wife will have the remaining 25% in the future ». Proof that, when it comes to business, reason always gets the better of the heart.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that might interest you
- Farewell to Leonardo Del Vecchio, the founder of Luxottica has died
- Leonardo Del Vecchio, who does the inheritance go to?
- The dream wedding of Leonardo Del Vecchio, son of the owner of Luxottica
-
Duilio Piaggesi / Fotogramma / ipa-agency.net1/4
-
Maurizio Maule / ipa-agency.net2/4
-
Maurizio Maule / ipa-agency.net3/4
-
Maurizio Maule / ipa-agency.net4/4
DEL VECCHIO LEONARDO CON LA WIFE (MILAN – 1997-01-17, Maurizio Maule) ps the photo can be used in compliance with the context in which it was taken, and without the defamatory intent of the decorum of the people represented
Source: Vanity Fair