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Feb 16 - Feb 23,2003 |
Gianni Agnelli leaves priceless legacy
Italy's leading magnate led life of privilege and tragedy
Originally Published: 2003-02-02
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Gianni Agnelli
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Gianni Agnelli's life had all the makings of a Hollywood movie, with his fast cars, movie-star girlfriends, personal tragedies and family infighting. But the business magnate, who died last week at the age of 81, was more than a libertine playboy. He was instrumental in dragging Fiat, the car company his father founded, out of its Mediterranean obscurity into the global big league.
Born in 1921 into a combination of money and power (his mother was a Bourbon princess), Gianni Agnelli seemed cut out for a life of feckless indulgence.
During his youth, he moved in a predictably raffish set, racing around the world with Prince Rainier of Monaco, and courting Hollywood divas such as Rita Hayworth and Anita Ekberg.
He fought for Italy - and fascism - on the Eastern Front in World War II, but kept well away from anything that smelled like work. The family firm, then a substantial but largely domestic carmaker, was firmly in the grip of Vittorio Valletta, his grandfather's trusted lieutenant.
It was only in 1966, when Mr. Agnelli was in his mid-forties, that he was catapulted in to take charge of the company that his grandfather founded in 1899; he became Fiat managing director in 1963 and chairman in 1966, a post he filled for 30 years.
Without experience, he nonetheless seemed to have a fingertip understanding of how the tightly managed company should proceed. He liberated his underlings from the tyranny of Mr. Valletta, encouraged experimentation with design and branding, and pushed the increasingly glamorous Fiat brand into international markets.
At the same time, he used the firm's cash to extend its reach into a labyrinth of subsidiary holdings, including newspapers, banking and insurance, even food and textiles.
This paid off - for a while. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was considered managerially prudent to use a cash cow such as a car maker to fund forays into diverse businesses.
The Agnelli family, with some 150 members involved in the business in some form, is a complicated beast, and its investments are suitably impenetrable. The spending sprees of the past 30 years have left Ifi, the main family holding company, with a huge sprawl of investments, including stakes in tour operator Club Med, Juventus soccer club, Chateau Margaux wines and Distacom, a Hong Kong telephone company.
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