How did they acquire Oakley? I don't remember any major controversy at the time, and reading a few news articles and Wikipedia, it just reads like any other corporate merger.
> Luxottica purchased Sunglass Hut in early 2001. It promptly told Oakley it wanted to pay significantly lower wholesale prices or it would reduce its orders and push its own brands instead.
> Within months, Oakley acknowledged to shareholders that the talks hadn't gone well and that Luxottica was slashing its orders.
> The company's stock immediately lost more than a third of its value.
> The fact that this isn't mentioned on Wikipedia might mean that Luxxotica has been very good at scrubbing their online persona.
It's on Wikipedia:
"Luxottica acquired Oakley in November 2007 for US$2.1 billion. Oakley had tried to dispute their prices because of Luxottica's large marketshare, and Luxottica responded by dropping Oakley from their stores, causing their stock price to drop, followed by Luxottica's hostile take over of the company."
Oops, I based that on the Oakley wikipedia article (which only mentions vague antitrust concerns[1]) and the parent's ignorance about Luxxotica's purchase of Oakley (I assumed he looked at the Wikipedia article).
I did read that section, but it's not immediately clear to me that those two things are causally related. Yes, Luxxotica cut Oakley out of their stores and Oakley stock lost a lot of value. But, Luxxotica bought Oakley 6 years later. Where's the link exactly? Did Oakley's stock continue to decline? Was there shareholder demand to sell?
I was in the US Army in the time surrounding the purchase. The amount of Oakley product that was purchased by both the government and individual soldiers should have been enough to keep Oakley afloat all on its own.
the short story is Oakley wasn't interested in being acquired, but since Luxottica owns most of the sunglasses stores you've heard of, was able to turn the screws on Oakley by refusing to stock their product, causing it's share price to tank and enabled Luxottica to buy Oakley cheap.
