John Elkann

John Philip Jacob Elkann (born 1 April 1976) is an American-born Italian industrialist. In 1997, he became the chosen heir of his maternal grandfather Gianni Agnelli, following the death of Gianni's nephew Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, and since 2004 has been leading the Agnelli family, an Italian multi-industry business dynasty. The Agnelli family has been described in media as comparable to the Kennedy family in terms of prominence in national affairs.

Elkann chairs the automaker Stellantis and is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Exor, the holding company controlled by the Agnelli family, which also holds a controlling stake in Ferrari, CNH Industrial, Iveco, Juventus FC and The Economist Group. In July 2018, he was appointed chairman of Ferrari, and briefly was CEO from 2020 to 2021. In 2021, Elkann oversaw the merger between Fiat Chrysler and the PSA Group. He is the leader of a group that controls 14 brands, with production sites in 29 countries, employs 400,000 people, and is present in over 130 markets.

Born in New York City on 1 April 1976, Elkann held both Italian and U.S. citizenship; he renounced the latter in 2012. He is the eldest son of Alain Elkann, a New York-born journalist and writer of French-Jewish origin and Italian-Jewish background, and his Italian wife Margherita Agnelli. His parents divorced in 1981 and both have remarried. Elkann's maternal grandparents were the head of Fiat S.p.A., Gianni Agnelli, and the socialite Marella Agnelli (born Donna Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto); his great-grandfather was the industrialist Edoardo Agnelli, and his great-great-grandfather was Giovanni Agnelli, founder of Fiat S.p.A. His paternal great-grand-uncle was the banker Ettore Ovazza. He has a brother, Lapo Elkann, and a sister, Ginevra Elkann.

Elkann had attended primary school in both the United Kingdom, and Brazil, before his family moved to Paris, where he obtained a baccalauréat scientifique at the State School Lycée Victor-Duruy in 1994. Later that same year, he moved to Italy to attend the Polytechnic University of Turin, where he graduated with a degree in management engineering in 2000; his thesis was on e-commerce and online auctions. Elkann has cited figures such as Gianluigi Gabetti, Sergio Marchionne, Warren Buffett, and the Wallenberg family as key influences on his education and early career. He is fluent in Italian, English, French, and Portuguese.

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.

As CEO of Exor, Elkann represents the ownership of association football club Juventus. In 2010, Elkann supported his cousin Andrea Agnelli's bid to become chairman of Juventus.

As Executive Chairman of Ferrari, Elkann holds a controlling interest in the auto racing team Scuderia Ferrari, the company's auto racing division, which competes in Formula One. The team returned to 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023 after a fifty-year period of absence as a manufacturer and won the centenary edition of the race, repeating the victory in two subsequent years.

Elkann is chairman of the Agnelli Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting education through scientific research and initiatives.

Since 2014, Fondazione Agnelli has offered Italian students and their families a free online portal where they can find which secondary schools in their area provide the best preparation for university and the workplace. Together with Compagnia di San Paolo through Fondazione Agnelli he launched Torino fa scuola, a project dedicated to the renovation of school buildings in the city area.

Starting from July 2020, Elkann supported the launch and expansion of the Arcipelago Educativo project, co-designed and promoted by the Agnelli Foundation, Exor, and Save the Children to fight the risk of dropping out of students due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In April 2019, along with CERN's Director-General Fabiola Gianotti and the Italian architect Renzo Piano, Elkann participated in a media event to unveil Science Gateway, a new scientific education and outreach centre of CERN, which aims to share knowledge and technology for free with society. The project was funded through external donations, through the Stellantis Foundation as the main supporter. On 21 June 2021 he celebrated a further step forward with the laying of the first stone, and then attended the official inauguration in October 2023, where he remembered Sergio Marchionne, to whom the auditorium of the structure is dedicated.

In May 2019, Elkann took part in the 28th edition of the partita del cuore to raise funds for the Piedmontese Foundation for Cancer Research and Italy's Telethon Foundation. In March 2020, to help Italian citizens suffering from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the leader of the Agnelli family he deliberated a €10 million donation to the national Civil Protection Department and to La Stampa Foundation – Specchio dei tempi, a social assistance organization that operates in Piedmont, to respond to the local health and social needs in the city of Turin and Piedmont. Elkann and his wife Lavinia are also among the supporters of Crescere Insieme al Sant'Anna, a philanthropic project aiming at expanding and improving the neonatal intensive care unit of the main public pediatric hospital of Turin. On 9 May 2016, the first neonatal intensive care unit was inaugurated.

Elkann was baptized and raised Roman Catholic. Nicknamed Jaki, or Yaki, he has lived in the United Kingdom, Brazil, France, and Italy. In 2004, he married Donna Lavinia Borromeo (born Lavinia Ida Borromeo-Arese on 19 March 1977 in Milan), a member of the prominent Italian aristocratic family the House of Borromeo. She is the daughter of Don Carlo Ferdinando Borromeo, Count of Arona, Piedmont (born in 1935), the son of Vitaliano Borromeo, 2nd Prince of Angera. Her half-sister is Beatrice Borromeo, the wife of Pierre Casiraghi, who is eighth in the line of succession to the Monegasque throne. They married on 4 September 2004 in a Catholic ceremony in the Cappella Bianca on Isola Madre, one of the Borromean Islands of Lake Maggiore. They have three children: Leone, Oceano, and Vita, and live in Turin.

An engineer by training, he declares himself passionate about technology and pursues interests in this field. Since 2009, Elkann has been attending the annual media and tech conference organized in July every year by Allen & Co at Sun Valley, Idaho. He is also a regular contributor to the Google Camp, which every year gathers tech entrepreneurs, investors, representatives of institutions and pop stars in Sciacca, Agrigento, and other places around Sicily. In August 2011, he took part, along with Sergio Marchionne, in the Rimini Meeting organized by Communion and Liberation. Until 2020, he was a member of the board Bilderberg Group and the only Italian other than journalist Lilli Gruber. In 2012, Elkann attended the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group in Chantilly, Virginia.

Elkann is the chief executive officer of Exor, the chairman of Stellantis, general partner of Giovanni Agnelli B.V., and the executive chairman of Ferrari. Additionally, he is the chairman of the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation. He is also a trustee of MOMA, a member of Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, and was a member of the Bilderberg Group. Elkann is a member of the JP Morgan International Council, a board member of Meta Platforms, and was vice-chairman of Italy's Aspen Institute.

Appeal of Conscience Award, September 2010.

Dea Roma Special Achievement Award in Business Leadership, from the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), October 2025

Nominated Knight of the Order of Merit for Labour in the Italian automotive industry, May 2021.