Former Chancellor George Osborne to chair £2.4bn investment firm

Former Chancellor George Osborne to chair £2.4bn investment firm owned by one of Italy’s richest families

Two of the best-known names in British finance will team 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 firm called Lingotto Investment Management.

The £2.4billion firm is owned by Exor, holding company for the billionaire Agnelli family, which also controls Turin’s Juventus football club and is the largest shareholder in carmaker Stellantis.

Exor is run by the Agnelli heir John Elkann, 47, who has been responsible for the family fortune since 2004. 

Hired: Former Chancellor George Osborne (pictured) and maverick fund manager James Anderson have been hired by the Agnelli family  to run Lingotto Investment Management

A colourful dynasty, it has never been far from controversy. In 2016, John’s brother, 45-year-old Lapo Elkann, faked his own kidnapping after indulging in a two-day drug binge and running out of money.

Osborne, who is a banker at boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, will be chairman of Lingotto while tech investment guru Anderson has joined as a partner and fund manager. 

The fund will invest in equities across all sectors, including Anderson’s speciality 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 investment management professionals to join a place which is entrepreneurial and much focused on letting them do what they’re good at and what they love’. 

On the website, Lingotto markets itself as ‘an independent, entrepreneurial’ firm that will allow staff to pursue their ‘passion for investing without the bureaucracy of most large organisations, or the loneliness of standalone funds’.

It is another high-profile role for Osborne, 51, who is already a partner at Robey Warshaw, a job he took up in early 2021.

It has proved lucrative, with the former politician having been one of four partners who shared a £26.5million payout last year. He is also a director for his family’s wallpaper-making business, Osborne & Little, which is controlled by his father Sir Peter Osborne, and chairman of the British Museum.

Osborne – who drives a Maserati, which is made by Stellantis – has known the Agnelli family for some time and chaired Exor’s business advisory council for five years, a role he will relinquish.

Anderson also knows the Agnellis, having spent nearly four decades at Edinburgh based investment management firm Baillie Gifford, a long-time shareholder in Exor companies, including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ferrari.

But it is his technology knowledge that will appeal to the Agnelli clan, having spent over 20 years as manager of Baillie’s flagship Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

Tycoon: John Elkann is executive chairman of Ferrari. He has has been responsible for the Agnelli family fortune since 2004

Tycoon: John Elkann is executive chairman of Ferrari. He has has been responsible for the Agnelli family fortune since 2004

There he helped to turn the private partnership into an unlikely star of tech investing through early bets on the likes of Tesla and Amazon.

During Anderson’s tenure, from April 2000 to March 2022, the company gained a mammoth 1,155pc.

However, Anderson left under a cloud in April last year following a severe downturn in the fund’s fortunes as interest rates rose rapidly and investors lost confidence in the tech sector.

Lingotto begins life with two other managing partners who are already working at Exor – Matteo Scolari and Nikhil Srinivasan – and is led by another long-time company employee, Enrico Vellano.

John Elkann is the great-great- grandson of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat.

The businessman came to prominence in 1997 when his grandfather Gianni Agnelli made him his heir.

He is chief executive at Exor, chairman of Stellantis and executive chairman of Ferrari.

He is married to Italian aristocrat Lavinia Borromeo and they have three children.

***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk