La storia di Gianni AGNELLI ||| L'avvocato

⚫ Subscribe to join the discussion⚫    / @gianlucafraula   🔴 Instagram 🔴   / gianlucafraula   The story of Gianni AGNELLI ||| The Lawyer Giovanni Agnelli, known as Gianni, was born in Turin on March 12, 1921, the second of seven children. His mother, Virginia Bourbon del Monte, half Roman, half American, came from a very wealthy family. She was a nonconformist, a lover of parties and fun. She was promiscuous, which was highly unusual for the time. His father, Edoardo Agnelli, was the son of Giovanni Agnelli, a senator and founder of FIAT. Gianni grew up in Turin, primarily under the watchful eye of his English nanny. He was an unruly boy, mischievous with his sisters, and unsuccessful at school. Life in his early adolescence was carefree and easygoing, at least until a tragic Sunday in 1935. Edoardo Agnelli, in his early 40s, was on vacation in Forte dei Marmi and needed to return to Turin. To get there more quickly, he decided to fly to Genoa by seaplane with the experienced aviator Arturo Ferrarin. While landing on water, the plane struck something in the water and overturned. Edoardo, who had stood up to admire the maneuver, broke the window and was brutally struck on the head by the propeller. He died within hours. It was the first in a series of deaths that would strike, like a curse, one of the most powerful families, one of the most powerful dynasties in Italian history. Edoardo's death changes not only the history of 20th-century Italy—had he lived, the events we are recounting would have been different—but above all, it changes the history of the Agnelli family, and Gianni in particular. That boy, that child, who is only 14 years old, doesn't know it yet, but represents family continuity in a company, FIAT, around which thousands of workers live and hope. From this moment on, a long internal struggle begins between his mother, Virginia, determined to remarry a few months after her husband's death, and his father-in-law, who won't allow it, for custody of the seven children. The feud ends with a compromise. His grandfather, Giovanni, becomes the most important figure in Gianni's life; he teaches him how to manage FIAT and works to hand it over to him as his sole heir. He sends him to the United States to show him how far ahead of Italy it was. He falls in love with that country, with its mentality so different from the Italian one. His grandfather's fortune came from there, from his discovery of Ford in Detroit in 1906, founded by Henry Ford. This discovery allowed him to understand that the future of the automobile lay in mass production. From that idea, FIAT was born, the company that would become the cornerstone of Italian industry. In 1939, World War II broke out, and Gianni felt compelled to fight despite his grandfather's opposition. In 1941, he left as a cavalry officer and took part in the Tunisian Campaign. Between 1942 and 1943, bombs fell on FIAT, and Gianni was forced to return; Giovanni wanted him at his side. After the fall of Mussolini, the factories had to be rebuilt, and his grandfather, also a senator, tried to save the industry by seeking a balance between the National Liberation Committee, the provisional government, and the Anglo-Americans. Giovanni was accused of collaborating with Mussolini and the fascist regime, and was forbidden from setting foot in the factory he himself had created. An immense grief quickly led to his death, despite his acquittal, at the age of 79, without ever being able to return to the company. A tragic moment for the Angeli family, who had also suffered the loss of their mother, Virginia, three weeks earlier, in a car accident. This left the seven children orphaned, without any family connection and with a company on their shoulders at a young age. At that time, Gianni was at the helm of an empire with a turnover of 15 billion lire a year. He was young, inexperienced, and clearly not the right man to lead the company. The reconstruction of FIAT fell to Vittorio Valletta, Giovanni's former right-hand man, who was ousted from management for collaboration and reinstated to the board of directors in 1946. Valletta became CEO with the support of the main shareholder, the Agnelli family, represented by Gianni. A famous anecdote is how Vittorio presented the 25-year-old with the choice of either leading FIAT himself or delegating management to him: "There are two possibilities: either you are President or I will be," Agnelli's prompt response was, "Professor, you do it."