March 12 one hundred years ago Giovanni Agnelli was born in Turin, called Gianni to immediately distinguish him from the progenitor of the family, the senator of the Kingdom and founder, together with eight other partners, of Fiat Giovanni Agnelli.
In the best Savoy tradition of Turinese society, he attended public school at the D'Azeglio high school and then the University where he graduated in Law, becoming for all over the years "the Lawyer".
He was of liberal education, in a period in which the prevailing ideology among young people was different, thanks to his grandfather (author, with Attilio Cabiati, in 1918 of the pro-European manifesto "European Federation or League of Nations?") who flanked him as "tutor private" Franco Antonicelli, an anti-fascist intellectual already sentenced by the regime to prison and confinement for three years and future senator, in the sixties, of the Italian Republic elected as an independent in the ranks of the PCI.
From 1946 and for the following twenty years it will be Vice-President of Fiat under the presidency of Vittorio Valletta.
An anecdote has it that at that time Valletta asked the young representative of the Agnelli family, the then twenty-five-year-old Gianni: "There are two cases: either you or I do the President”, and Agnelli replied: “Professor, you do it”.
Taken in hand the management of the company in the mid-sixties when the post-war "economic miracle" was over and a period of economic crisis was beginning which was euphemistically called "the conjuncture" and which would later lead to the union struggles, in the oil crisis, in the march of the forty thousand, but also in the restructuring, consolidation and relaunch of Fiat in the eighties and nineties.
He was tight ties with America, in particular with the Kennedys, with Nelson Rockefeller, first Governor of the State of New York and then Vice-President of the United States, and with the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, gaining international prominence in the midst of the Cold War for the relationship established with Aleksej Kossighin, prime minister of the Soviet Union, at the end of the 1976s, following the start-up of the Fiat factory in Russia or, as in XNUMX, with the entry into Fiat capital of Lafico (Lybian Arab Foreign Investment Company), the say Gaddafi's Bank, and the consequent appointment of two Libyan representatives to the Fiat board of directors.
THEoperation with Libya definitively consecrated the qualities, already amply demonstrated, of the lawyer's diplomatic end, so much so that more than once, during the frequent crises of the Italian governments, his name was mentioned in the Roman palaces for the Farnesina (it was later his sister Susanna to be appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Dini Government of 1995).
In the mid-seventies the Avvocato was therefore already a legend not only in Italy but also internationally. Time dedicated the cover to him and Newsweek elected him "the first industrialist in Europe". For the French he is "le roi Gianni" and we too often referred to him as "the last king of Italy".
In 1991 he was nominated Senator for life by Francesco Cossiga.
I met in person for the first time the President of Fiat, avv. Gianni Agnelli, in Foggia on a visit to the Sofim plant in 1978, of which I was Personnel Director at the time. Sofim (French-Italian engine company) was born from an equal shareholding between Iveco-Fiat, Saviem-Renault and Alfa Romeo-Finmeccanica for the construction in the Foggia plant of light diesel engines for commercial vehicles and cars.
The plant, the first in Europe to be highly automated for mechanical processing, had been in operation for about a year for the daily production of one thousand engines and a workforce of two thousand workers.
The visiting Fiat delegation was represented at the highest levels with the Avvocato accompanied by his brother Umberto, by the managing director Cesare Romiti and by the financial director Francesco Paolo Mattioli.
After the usual meeting with the company management, the guests were offered a tour of the manufacturing departments in a obviously Fiat minibus.
While the minibus moved slowly between the assembly lines, the lawyer began to bombard me with questions about the workers: average age, men and women, educational qualifications, professional training, commuting, methods of personnel selection, possible pressure from local political bosses , and so on.
At one point, gambling, I proposed to get off the bus and walk to meet some workers.
It was a success: as soon as he was recognized, he was approached by the workers who greeted him and thanked him for the work brought to the South.
Suddenly, as word spread throughout the factory that Agnelli was there, thunderous applause broke out.
The lawyer looked at me and with a sad smile he murmured: “Today if we were at Mirafiori the marbles would fly of steel".
In 1978 in Turin the BR fired in the factory.
The year-end meeting of the Presidency with the executives had always been held first at the Centro Storico Fiat in via Chiabrera and then at the Lingotto, but in December 2001 it was held for the first and only time at the Mirafiori, and only after all of us we understood.
After the presentation of the company situation and its prospects by the then President in office, the lawyer Paolo Fresco (the central theme was possible alliances starting from the joint venture in place with GM), the lawyer took the floor.
By now visibly tried, he made a short speech reconfirming his full trust in the management he had in front of him, confident that the Fiat executives would overcome, as they had done so many times in the past, the difficulties of the new international challenges.
In wishing us and our families happy holidays, he greeted us with "now I'm leaving Mirafiori and going back to the city".
Almost as if it were a farewell omen, we all leapt to our feet with an interminable applause that ceased only when emotion prevailed.
It was the last time I saw him: he passed away a year later, on January 24, 2003.
