Gianni Agnelli

Holding companies and family partnerships. Agnelli led Fiat for decades through a chain of family holding companies, at the top of which sat a partnership of family members, letting a minority stake control Italy's largest private industrial group. He chose his grandson John Elkann as heir. After his death in 2003, the structure carried through into Exor, though a long legal dispute with his daughter Margherita over the inheritance followed.