, and Italian president
Giorgio Napolitano, 25 October 2006 In December 1997, at the age of 21, he was selected as the heir of his grandfather
Gianni Agnelli in place of
Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, the son of Gianni's younger brother,
Umberto Agnelli, He was appointed to the
Fiat S.p.A. board that same year, when he was 22, the same age his grandfather Gianni also joined it in 1943, and to the board of Giovanni Agnelli Sapaz (now Giovanni Agnelli B.V.), the family partnership controlling
Exor. In 2000, after graduating in engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin, he joined General Electric's Corporate Audit program. He left General Electric two years later; In 2003, Elkann joined IFIL, which later became Exor, where he was in charge of control and development, and was in particular responsible for supervising Rinascente and Alpitour. After the death of Gianni Agnelli in 2003, which was followed by that of Elkann's great-uncle
Umberto Agnelli in 2004, Elkann became vice-chairman of Fiat and vice-chairman of Giovanni Agnelli Sapaz. In 2008, Elkann was seen as "the great unknown", and he replaced 83-year-old Gabetti as the head of IFIL, which managed a portfolio worth eight billion euros. In March 2009, he merged the holding companies IFI and IFIL to create Exor, stepping to the role of chairman. In 2010, he became chairman of Fiat S.p.A. (then FCA), succeeding
Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, and chairman of the Giovanni Agnelli Sapaz, succeeding Gabetti; at the time, Fiat had changed four CEOs in three years. The
Financial Times characterized Elkann's appointment as "a confirmation of change that could prove to be the making of a new Fiat and also of the Agnelli family's future fortunes." In February 2011, Elkann was appointed chairman and CEO of Exor. The value of the company's assets has grown and multiplied nine times in ten years. Since 2017, Elkann became chairman of
Ferrari,
GEDI Gruppo Editoriale, and the , a philanthropic institution supporting education. He is an active member of several non-profit organizations and think tanks engaged in the global geopolitical debate, one of the founders of the
Collège des Ingénieurs Italia, and a trustee of the
Museum of Modern Art. three months before Fiat's official departure in January 2012, "in the interests of the Association's autonomy and independence", as written in his resignation letter to then-president
Emma Marcegaglia. In a 2013 interview to the
Detroit Free Press, Elkann identified
Bill Ford Jr. as a mentor. That same year, he was included by
Fortune in the world's most influential managers under the age of 40. In a November 2013 interview to
Campden FB, Elkann said he wanted to change
capitalism. He said: "There is an alternative to financial investors and professional investment managers, and that's what we want to be. You need to be able to portray business to society in a favourable way. All the emphasis has been on shareholder value, not stakeholder value. One of the benefits of family businesses is they focus on all stakeholders." In 2015, Elkann acquired the insurer company PartnerRe in 2014 Having previously held a seat on
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corp board and an inherited seat on the board of
RCS Media Group, Elkann acquired a majority stake in
The Economist Group in 2015; he was described as the opposite of fellow media mogul
Silvio Berlusconi. Under Elkann's management, Exor purchased the controlling stake in GEDI Gruppo Editoriale from
CIR Group for $113 million in 2019; GEDI is the owner of two of Italy's most influential newspapers, namely the Rome-based,
liberal-leaning
La Repubblica and the
centrist, Turin-based
La Stampa. In 2019, Elkann announced he would be trying to merge FCA with Peugeot S.A. (
PSA Group), with the goal of forming the world's fourth largest OEM by volume and third largest by revenues, and catch up on
electric cars, as well as
autonomous vehicles. In May 2019, he tried to also enlist
Renault. In December 2019, it was announced that FCA and Peugeot had reached an agreement to merge. In July 2020, he and FCA's CEO Mike Manley announced that the name of the combined company would be
Stellantis. In March 2020, Elkann and FCA's board of directors agreed to forego their remaining compensation for 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Between December 2020 and September 2021, following the resignation of
Louis Camilleri, he held the position of
CEO of Ferrari until the appointment of
Benedetto Vigna. In May 2021, Elkann was nominated Knight of the
Order of Merit for Labour in the automotive industry by Italy's president
Sergio Mattarella. In 2021,
Forbes estimated his net worth to be around US$2 billion. In two January 2023 interviews to
La Repubblica and
La Stampa, in remembrance of the twenty years since Gianni's death, Elkann said: "If we compare the company in 2003 and today's we see that revenues go from 22 billion to 130 in the first nine months of 2022 alone; there were 22 car models produced then, which employed 49,000 people, for 4 brands: today 280,000 people produce over 100 models for 14 brands. We have enhanced the Fiat brand, so much so that next year the
electric 500 will also be exported to the USA. We have relaunched the
Maserati and
Alfa Romeo brands and we are relaunching
Lancia. Furthermore, today we produce in Italy and sell models of highly successful non-Italian brands, such as
Jeep, all over the world." On 15 May 2023 he announced as a founder the launch of Lingotto, an investment management company fully owned by Exor and headquartered in London. In January 2025, Elkann was appointed a board director at
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