Essilor hit by Fraud

Essilor Luxottica, the world’s biggest maker of frames and lenses has discovered “fraudulent financial activity” at one of its Thailand plants that could result in £163m ( €190m) to the Franco-Italian eyewear group.

Essilor International, had “mobilised resources” to put an end to the fraudulent activities and launched an investigation and taking all possible actions to seek the misappropriated funds in order to mitigate the impact. Essilor Luxottica shares fell 3 per cent by late morning in Paris but is still up more than 20 per cent this year.

The hit will be recorded in this year’s operating results and the employees suspected of involvement in the fraud have been fired.

Essilor Luxottica which was created from one of Europe’s largest-ever cross-border mergers in 2017 and is home to brands including Ray-Ban and Oakley. The tension between France’s Essilor and Italy’s Luxottica erupted publicly on March 19 over plans to hire a new CEO to run the group, which has a combined market value of £51bn (€60bn). When the merger was first agreed, both Leonardo Del Vecchio, the octogenarian founder of Luxottica and Hubert Sagnieres, CEO of Essilor had agreed to share power before a  CEO was hired.

In July they also agreed to buy rival GrandVision in a £6bn (€7.1bn) deal.