In January 2017, the company agreed on a merger with Essilor. The deal also offered a succession plan for Leonardo Del Vecchio, the company's founder. Shortly before the merger completed, reporter Sam Knight wrote in "The Guardian", "in seven centuries of spectacles, there has never been anything like it. The new entity will be worth around $50bn (£37bn), sell close to a billion pairs of lenses and frames every year, and have a workforce of more than 140,000 people." On 1 October 2018 the new holding company EssilorLuxottica was founded, resulting in combined market capitalization of approximately €57 billion.