Boss gives staff $10 million to celebrate his birthday

armani del vecchio
Luxottica's Leonardo Del Vecchio on the right with Giorgio Armani.

This boss is definitely better than your boss.

The founder of eyewear giant Luxottica (LUX) has granted his Italian employees around €9 million ($10 million) worth of shares in the company.

The gift from Leonardo Del Vecchio is designed to thank workers and mark his upcoming 80th birthday.

"With this small gesture, I would like to show how important the employees are to me: I truly feel as if we are family," Del Vecchio said in a statement.

Related: Why these sunglasses cost $150

The company has 77,000 employees worldwide, but only Luxottica's 8,000 Italian workers will get to share in Del Vecchio's birthday present. That will work out to $1,200 in share each.

Up to 140,000 shares will be distributed, but the gift won't make much of a dent in Del Vecchio's bank account.

He's one of Italy's wealthiest men and ranked 40th in the 2015 Forbes rich list with a fortune of more than $20 billion.

Luxottica makes a range of eyewear brands, including Ray-Ban and Oakley, and has more than 7,000 optical and sunglasses stores worldwide.

The gesture comes on the heels of another act of C-suite kindness.

The chief executive of Gravity Payments Dan Price took a 90% pay cut and slashed his company's profits last month just so he could give his employees a raise.

The Seattle-based payment processing firm he founded has pledged to make sure all of his staffers make at least $70,000 annually in the next three years.

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