EssilorLuxottica can say goodbye to the purchase of GrandVision. The Arbitration Tribunal has perhaps put the definitive point to a soap opera that began in 2019, when the Italian-French group had reached an agreement for the purchase of GrandVision, a chain of optical stores and owner in France of GrandOptical and Générale d'optique , based on 7,2 bln. Then there was Covid and EssiLux challenged the negotiation, arguing that the initially fixed price should be considered too high in light of the crisis into which it fell GrandVision during the pandemic, and which according to the eyewear giant is also attributable to mismanagement by the Dutch group. The accusation was of not having provided all the information useful for a common front in the face of the consequences of the virus. GrandVision, controlled by the Dutch fund HAL (owned by the Van der Vorm family) reacted very badly, engaging in a legal battle that lasted two years and objecting in particular to Essilor Luxottica the fact that in the summer of 2020 the EU had actually given the green light to the deal.
For the Dutch, Covid was a pretext for EssiLux to blow up a deal that had already been put on paper. But in the end the Arbitration Court of Rotterdam agreed with the potential buyers, who now have the upper hand. The Italian-French group announced in a press release that it will now take some time to decide what moves to make: the deadline set by the agreement is July 31st: if the proposal remains the same, EssiLux is authorized to give up to purchase, but in the meantime the Dutch could decide to renegotiate the price downwards. Even if this does not necessarily happen, given the now largely deteriorated relations between the two betrothed. And there don't seem to be any other possible buyer candidates on the horizon. EssilorLuxottica therefore finds itself at a crossroads: the GrandVision operation had already been partly financed by small shareholders, with the purchase of 5 billion bonds. However, the Italian-French group is not sailing in reassuring waters: there seems to be a recovery in 2021, but in 2020 the profit was almost zeroed (-90%), going from one billion in 2019 to less than 90 million.
Despite the tensions, EssilorLuxottica has generally always hinted that it wants to complete the purchase: it would be a matter of getting your hands on a network of Over 7.000 sales outlets throughout Europe. Meanwhile, the stock, listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, does not seem to be positively affected by the favorable decision: at the end of the morning loses almost 1%.
