Former Chancellor George Osborne becomes chairman of a £2.4 billion investment company owned by one of Italy’s wealthiest families
Two of the best-known names in British finance have teamed up to work for one of Italy’s richest and most glamorous families.
Former Chancellor George Osborne and maverick fund manager James Anderson have been hired by the Agnellis to run an investment company called Lingotto Investment Management.
The £2.4bn company is owned by Exor, holding company of the billionaire Agnelli family, which also controls Turin football club Juventus and is the largest shareholder in car maker Stellantis.
Exor is run by Agnelli heir John Elkann, 47, who has been responsible for the family fortune since 2004.
Adopted: Former Chancellor George Osborne (pictured) and maverick fund manager James Anderson have been hired by the Agnelli family to run Lingotto Investment Management
A colorful dynasty, it has never been far from controversy. In 2016, John’s brother, 45-year-old Lapo Elkann, staged his own kidnapping after he indulged in a two-day drug bust and ran out of money.
Osborne, who is a banker at boutique consultancy Robey Warshaw, will become chairman of Lingotto, while tech investment guru Anderson will join as a partner and fund manager.
The fund will invest in stocks from all sectors, including Anderson’s specialty technology, which has struggled over the past two years amid rapidly rising interest rates.
John Elkann said his vision for Lingotto was to “provide a home for very talented wealth management professionals to join a place that is entrepreneurial and very focused on getting them to do what they do best and what they love’.
On its website, Lingotto markets itself as “an independent, entrepreneurial” company that empowers staff to pursue their “passion for investing without the bureaucracy of most large organizations or the loneliness of stand-alone funds.”
It’s another high-profile role for 51-year-old Osborne, who is already a partner at Robey Warshaw, a job he took up in early 2021.
It has proved lucrative as the former politician was one of four partners to share a £26.5 million payout last year. He is also a director of his family’s wallpaper business, Osborne & Little, controlled by his father Sir Peter Osborne, and chairman of the British Museum.
Osborne – who drives a Maserati made by Stellantis – has known the Agnelli family for some time and served as chairman of Exor’s corporate advisory board for five years, a role he will be relinquishing.
Anderson also knows de Agnellis, having spent nearly four decades at Edinburgh-based investment management firm Baillie Gifford, a long-time shareholder of Exor companies including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ferrari.
But it’s his technological know-how that will appeal to the Agnelli clan, having spent more than 20 years as manager of Baillie’s flagship Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.
Tycoon: John Elkann is executive chairman of Ferrari. Since 2004, he has been responsible for the Agnelli family’s fortune
There, he helped turn the private partnership into an unlikely star of technology investment through early bets on the likes of Tesla and Amazon.
During Anderson’s tenure, from April 2000 to March 2022, the company gained a massive 1,155 percent.
However, Anderson left under a cloud last April following a severe downturn in the fund’s fortunes as interest rates rose rapidly and investors lost confidence in the technology sector.
Lingotto starts life with two other managing partners who already work at Exor – Matteo Scolari and Nikhil Srinivasan – and is led by another employee of the company, Enrico Vellano.
John Elkann is the great-great-grandson of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat.
The businessman rose to prominence in 1997 when his grandfather Gianni Agnelli made him his heir.
He is CEO at Exor, chairman of Stellantis and executive chairman of Ferrari.
He is married to Italian aristocrat Lavinia Borromeo and they have three children.