The end of Fiat/Italian implications: basta!

Italian capitalism won’t come away unscathed from Fiat’s latest manoeuvres. The era of grand families controlling swathes of the country’s industry through cross-shareholdings is on the wane. The Agnellis were more than Fiat’s controlling shareholders. They have been the de facto royal family of Italian capitalism. Gianni Agnelli, the patriarch who died in 2003, was at the centre of a web the cross-shareholdings that gave a small group of entrepreneurs and bankers disproportionate power over It...