John Elkann, heir to the Agnelli fortune and the helm of Ferrari and Sterile Corporate Monolith Stellantis, now finds himself embroiled in a bitter, almost Shakespearean legal struggle with his own mother. Margherita Agnelli has unearthed what her lawyers describe as a previously hidden handwritten note from her father, the late Gianni Agnelli—a note that, if upheld, could unravel decades of control over one of Italy’s most powerful family empires.

In it, Gianni bequeaths his stake in Dicembre, the holding company at the apex of Exor, to his son Edoardo, who died in 2000. Yet Elkann, armed with a 1996 document and the machinations of the 2004 estate settlement, has long controlled the company that dominates Ferrari, Stellantis, and the global financial web woven by the Agnellis.

The struggle is not merely about money—it is about power, legacy, and the cold arithmetic of dynastic survival. Margherita’s fight is framed as a defence of her children from a second marriage, a claim to what she believes is their rightful inheritance. Yet, it pits mother against son in a battle emblematic of the corrosive grip of wealth and privilege.

The note surfaced amid a separate criminal inquiry into tax evasion, a reminder that even the insulated towers of European wealth are not immune to the pressures of law and morality. This is a family saga of extraordinary fortune and deep fractures, a story that exposes the human cost of concentrated power and the ceaseless machinations required to protect it.

In the quiet of courtrooms in Turin, the Agnelli legacy—Italy’s gilded emblem of industrial might—is being dissected, challenged, and, perhaps, undone.