David Rosenthal

Gianni Agnelli dies.

Tragically, the logical heirs to the Agnelli empire in the next generation had also already died young.

So when Gianni dies in 2003, his brother Umberto takes over.

But he only lives for another year, and then he passes away in 2004.

When this happens, the empire is in chaos.

Meanwhile, the fiat business is really struggling.

Sales have been falling off a cliff.

The company has a mountain of debt, and the share price is, like, trending towards scraping the bottom here.

So the last surviving Agnelli of Gianni and Umberto's generation is Susanna,

mother of Luca's best friend growing up.

She calls Luca after Umberto dies and asks him to take over as Fiat chairman and replace Gianni and Umberto in addition to Ferrari.

So Luca will stay at Ferrari, but he will now come and serve the Agnellis as sort of a steward and a bridge to the next generation while they get the house in order and hopefully try to save Fiat along the way.

So he's chairman of the parent company.

He's now chairman of Fiat and Ferrari.

Which they own 90% of.

Yes.

And at the same time, the chosen next heir in the generation below in the Agnelli family is a man named John Elkin.

who you might have heard of.

Today is a celebrated investor and head of Exor, the publicly traded holding company, which is the Agnelli family holding company.

He's 27 years old at this point in time, though.