Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Power of a Dynasty

" Mondo Agnelli is rich in detail and epic in scope. It′s all here: the family and corporate crisis that beset the Agnellis and their company, Fiat, at the dawn of the twenty–first century, and how the moves that saved Fiat Prompted an unprecedented split in the family. From the salons of Turin to the corridors of government in Washington, where Fiat′s Sergio Marchionne won control of Chrysler, Jennifer Clark spins a riveting tale of family and corporate power."
—Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and Deputy Editor in Chief of Reuters

"The unlikely story of how Fiat–a company synonymous with Italy itself–was able not just to avoid bankruptcy but to revive one of Detroit′s Big three carmakers will be an industrial case study for the ages. As Jennifer Clark′s narrative of the Agnellis captures, Fiat′s against–all–odds turnaround owes a great debt to the values of family capitalism. Where today′s short–term investors would have sent fiat to the junkyard during its dark days, the Agnellis had the vision, the guts, and the global savvy to hang on."
—Rob Cox,. U.S. Editor, Reuters Breakingviews

"Mondo Agnelli is a wonderful book that captures the highly colorful history of Fiat and the Agnelli family from the company′s earliest days in 1899 to the amazing turbulence that led to the merger of Chrysler and Fiat a few years ago. Ms. Clark has done an exhaustive review of the literature and conducted a large number of personal interviews to create a well–written, riveting, and spectacular story. As someone who has followed the industry for many years and knows some of the key players personally, I feel privileged to have had a chance to review this very special book. If you have even a marginal interest in the saga of the auto industry, it is a must–read."
—Dave Cole, PhD, Chairman, Auto Harvest, and Chairman Emeritus, Center for Automotive Research

Agnelli Family Tree x

Timeline xiii

Prologue 1

Part I The Power of a Family 11

Chapter 1 The Scattered Pieces 13

Chapter 2 A Dynasty Is Born 31

Chapter 3 From Salad to Skinny–Dipping 55

Chapter 4 Gianni Agnelli, King of a Republic 73

Chapter 5 A Lament like a River 97

Chapter 6 Only One Person Rules at a Time 115

Chapter 7 The Wedding of the Year 127

Part II The Power of an Individual 137

Chapter 8 Unfi xable Fiat 139

Chapter 9 Running on Empty 161

Chapter 10 You Deal with It, and You Move On 181

Chapter 11 Sergio Marchionne’s Two–Billion–Dollar Bet 205

Chapter 12 A Completely Different Beast 215

Part III The Power of a Government 231

Chapter 13 Skin in the Game 233

Chapter 14 The Spirit of Ubuntu: I See You 263

Chapter 15 Sixteen Models in 14 Months 285

Epilogue 309

Notes 315

Acknowledgments 339

About the Author 345

Index 347

Jennifer Clark was the Italian Bureau chief for Dow Jones & Co. for ten years until 2010, covering all aspects of Italian business, politics, and finance for the wall Street Journal, wsj.com, and Dow Jones Newswires. Prior to working at Dow Jones, Clark was a banking reporter at Reuters in Milan, and documented Berlusconi′s entry into politics for Bloomberg News in the early part of the 1990s. From 1988 to 1993, she was bureau chief at Variety, the U.S. entertainment weekly, covering Italy′s film and television industries from Rome.

"But the soul of the book is the 113–year story of feisty Fiat and the larger–than–life Agnelli family. That′s when it′s time to click your seat belt for a yarn that′s rich with affairs, suicides, drugs, family lawsuits, secrecy, hidden assets, offshore accounts, Benito Mussolini, princes and princesses, Jackie Kennedy, palaces and yachts, spectacular weddings, stately funerals and deep family loyalty." ( USA TODAY.com, February 2012)