Tim Precious, managing director of Essilor UK

Optician’s interview with Essilor UK managing director Tim Precious highlights the difficult job senior management figures at subsidiaries of multinational companies can have.

Just a couple of days before Optician was due to sit down with Precious at the company’s UK headquarters in Thornbury, news broke that Essilor’s parent company, EssilorLuxottica, was in talks with HAL Holdings to buy a majority stake in Dutch retailer Grandvision – which owns Vision Express in the UK.

Although the acquisition had not been confirmed at the time, that the two companies had issued statements saying talks were taking place meant there was a pretty good chance it was going to happen.