A Spectacular Merger
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Two companies dominate the global eyewear industry - and now they are merging into a glasses behemoth. What does it mean for the bespectacled public?
Manuela Saragosa investigates the story behind these two anonymous giants - Italian fashion frames designer Luxottica, and French lens-maker Essilor - with the help of American eyewear retail pioneer E Dean Martin, and Gordon Ilett of the UK's Association of Optometrists. And she asks the European Commission why they were happy to wave through their merger earlier this year. Producer: Laurence Knight.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Glasses model frames - black silhouettes isolated on white; Credit: Alxyzt/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I've come to pick up some glasses. |
| 0:04.8 | Manuela Saragossa, do you want to spell it? |
| 0:07.7 | Hello, I'm Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:09.9 | This is Business Daily from the BBC, |
| 0:12.6 | and in this edition we're focusing our lens on the eyewear business. |
| 0:16.5 | I've just bought two pairs of prescription glasses. |
| 0:19.1 | Those are my reading ones. |
| 0:21.4 | Oh, yes. |
| 0:22.8 | I can see. |
| 0:24.3 | That's great. |
| 0:25.2 | But visiting my local opticians here in London was somewhat overwhelming. |
| 0:29.7 | Did I want berry focals, bifocals, tinted, scratch-resistant or mirrored coatings? |
| 0:34.8 | That's just the lenses. |
| 0:36.0 | There was also the frames to consider. |
| 0:38.1 | So much choice. |
| 0:39.5 | Oh, this is so nice. |
| 0:42.3 | It's so nice. |
| 0:44.9 | Looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. |
| 0:49.1 | Yet pretty much all the frames and lenses on show |
| 0:51.7 | were manufactured by just two companies |
| 0:53.9 | you've probably never heard of. And manufactured by just two companies you've probably |
| 0:54.9 | never heard of. And now those same two companies are merging to create a global eyewear Bayamoff. |
... |
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