One hundred years of Gianni Agnelli, the embodiment of 20th century Italian capitalism

It was the symbol of the Italian economic renaissance, admired and hated at the same time and a mirror of the contradictions of an entire country. Gianni Agnelli -for everyone the lawyer– he was for more than half a century one of the great Italian figures of the world.

Born March 12, 1921, “the most famous lawyer” in Italy, even if he never was, this Friday I would have been 100 years old. His image returned to occupy the pages of newspapers and television programs, which retrace his life between success, glamor and tragedy – the parents died when he was still a teenager, suicidal son – of the man who was able to launch the Fiat on the international market.

WHO WAS GIANNI AGNELLI

Billionaire, genius, impostor: of Gianni Agnelli (as he was called to distinguish him from his grandfather, Giovanni, the founding patriarch of the Fiat automobile empire), everything has been said and written. He was businessman, senator for life, president of the Italian employers’ association, cosmopolitan figure who rubbed shoulders with the most powerful in the world, from Kennedy to Kissinger, ambassador of “made in Italy”, art connoisseur, sports lover – his Juventus and Ferrari above all – a style icon admired and imitated all over the world.

Certain phrases, more or less famous, more or less benevolent, define the character better than anything else. Federico Fellini: “Put a helmet on his head, put him on horseback, he’s a king.” His great friend Henry Kissinger: “Italian patriot, great European, friend of the United States.” Charlie Chaplin, ironic: “It’s a success and success makes people nice.” Designer Diane von Furstenberg: “Gianni was irresistible. It was impossible not to be seduced by him. All the women were crazy about him, all the men wanted to be him ”. His grand-son Lapo Elkann: “Gianni was a fantastic grandfather, but I wouldn’t have wanted him as a father.” The brother-in-law Carlo Caracciolo: “I had a huge desire to be loved, an overflowing, almost dangerous vitality”.

The definitions of the great pens of Italian journalism were also strong. Giorgio Bocca: “He was a prince without a kingdom ”. Indro Montanelli: “He had the art of using men.” Jas Gawronski: “He never read a book until the last page, never a movie, never a game seen until the end. He lived by running, just like he drove the car. I was obsessed with being the first ”. Vittorio Feltri: “His memorable works always have the watch on, not under, the lapel of his shirt; the tie on, and not under, the sweater ”. Fortebraccio: “When you’re a billionaire, you’re always very close to being hailed as a genius.”

FIAT, ITALY AND AN IDEA OF CAPITALISM

David Landes, the great Harvard economic historian, recently deceased, wrote: “Fiat is not a family business like any other, it is the very embodiment of 20th century Italian capitalism ”.

The same could be said of Agnelli.

Avocado it was the emblem of a capitalism based on dynastic succession, which Fiat reproduced at the corporate level. So much so that after the death of his father at the age of 15, his grandfather, the legendary founder of the automaker, elected him heir to the empire. A tradition that, decades later, he would repeat himself with his grandson and current president of Fiat John Elkann.

Agnelli was appointed CEO of Fiat in 1966, at age 45, after years of the good life between the international jet set and the Côte d’Azur. “He started working at an age when his employees were retiring”, Vittorio Feltri wrote in a vitriolic portrait.

However, during these years, in the midst of the Italian economic “miracle”, Agnelli “He was very good at driving Fiat with the success of these cars that marked an era (“600” before and “500” after) and with the opening in Russia of the Togliattigrad plant “, according to Giancarlo Mazzuca, co-author of “Gianni Agnelli in black and white”, a book on Lawyer published a few days before the anniversary.

Guided by the premise that “Fiat’s interest is Italy’s interest” and agrees to run a company “too big to fail” because of its systemic importance in the industrial fabric of the country and in terms of employment, Agnelli has always sought mutually beneficial relationships with politics, which he knew how to make the most of.

In this way, the Turin-based company has benefited over the years from protectionist measures, from laws for that, “Development plans” for the construction of new factories and unemployment benefits, a practice that critics saw as a form of “privatization of profits and socialization of losses”. Some estimates put 100 billion euros the money that has passed from public funds to the Agnelli industry.

Agnelli went through the union unrest and terrorism of the 1970s, the modernization of the 1980s, the globalization of the 1990s until the crisis of the 2000s when, full of debt, Fiat was about to declare bankruptcy.

“It certainly did not lead Italy to progress, but he was definitely better than most of the great Italian businessmen and finally, by his action and his example, he supported the meager civil, economic and cultural development of Italy ”, he writes. Sergio Noto, professor of economic history at the University of Verona.

Still inclined to the internationalization of Fiat, according to Mazzuca’s book, Agnelli understood in advance that the future of the automotive sector I was in union with other groups, because at the end there would be “Place in the world for more than 5 or 6 large companies”.

So in the early 2000s, the Italian tycoon opened an agreement with the Americans to General Motors. It was the first of the major international pacts which John elkann, heir to Lawyerand the CEO Sergio Marchionne deepened with the acquisition of Chrysler -Including the transfer of the company’s fiscal seat to the Netherlands- and concluded with the last one signed with the French company Renault and the birth of Stellantis. A merger which, however, leaves the Italian company in a position of subordination and increasingly distant from the country in which it was founded 121 years ago.

Recent events have deepened the differences between the conduct of Lawyer and that of his heirs. While until his death in 2003 Agnelli still bets on Italy and the automotive sector, the new generation has turned to financial investment in various fields such as media and fashion, with the French Louboutin as the most recent acquisition. A telling change in the direction Western capitalism has taken in the 21st century. Less and less concentrated on the industry and already without characters of the stature of the Lawyer, but much more efficient when it comes to generating profits.

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