Simon Jones: Forty pennies for your thoughts

It’s a been a significant week for the business side of the sector, with two pieces of news that will reverberate for quite some time.

In mainland Europe, EssilorLuxottica’s proposed €7.1bn acquisition of GrandVision was rubber stamped by European Commission competition regulators. Some 350 practices and retailers in Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands will have to be divested as part of the approval but given EssilorLuxottica will be adding an estimated 7,200 extra doors around the world as a result of the deal, I don’t think the company will mind too much.

It’s GrandVision’s control of Vision Express that will be of particular interest to practitioners here in the UK. Although several ‘non-essential’ practices were closed at the beginning of the pandemic, EssilorLuxottica will be adding nearly 600 doors to its retail portfolio. Both Essilor and Luxottica will have had difficult conversations with their independent customers as a result of acquisitions and e-commerce growth in recent years, and I imagine both are getting their rep and marketing teams prepared for another charm offensive.