Career
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, who had died at the age of 33. 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; Elkann described his work at General Electric as "a beautiful experience, because you sit around a table where no one speaks your language and two out of three come from another continent." He moved back to Turin to be closer to his ageing grandfather, as well as to the family business. 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. Elkann worked on the turnaround of Fiat Group. He was instrumental in the appointment of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) CEO Sergio Marchionne in May 2004.
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. Franzo Grande Stevens and Gianluigi Gabetti were instrumental in the appointment of Elkann. 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. Before this appointment, he mainly played a background role at Fiat. 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 Giovanni Agnelli Foundation, 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. A member of the Confindustria presidential committee, he followed Fiat's decision to leave the group and resigned from his role as vice-chairman in October 2011, 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 and took part in Ferrari’s debut as a listed company in stock exchange in Wall Street.
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 July 2018, a few days before the death of Marchionne, Elkann was chosen to take his place at Ferrari. 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 Meta Platforms.
