The Agnelli Family and Juventus: When Legacy Requires Governance

In December 2025, Exor received an unsolicited proposal from Tether to acquire all the shares that the holding company owned in Juventus.

The Board of Directors unanimously rejected the offer. In its statement to the market, Exor confirmed that it had no intention of selling its stake and described the Agnelli family as a stable, proud and committed shareholder that has supported the club for more than a century.

The value of the offer was not officially disclosed, nor have all the reasons underpinning the decision been made public.

Even so, the episode illustrates one of the most complex dilemmas faced by business families: how should they make decisions about an asset that holds economic value while also embodying family identity, reputation and continuity?

In circumstances such as these, knowing the price is not enough.

It is necessary to understand what the asset represents to the family, who has the authority to decide its future, and which governance structures prevent the preservation of a legacy from becoming an irrational resistance to change.

When a Football Club Becomes Part of a Family's History

The relationship between the Agnelli family and Juventus began on 24 July 1923, when Edoardo Agnelli, son of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, was elected President of the club.

He was later followed by Gianni, Umberto and Andrea Agnelli. Even during periods when no family member formally led the organisation, family ownership remained intact.

The most significant point is not merely the longevity of that relationship, but the way it became embedded within a much broader ownership structure.

In 1927, just four years after Edoardo joined Juventus, Giovanni Agnelli established the Istituto Finanziario Industriale (IFI) to control and oversee Fiat and the family's other business interests. Over subsequent decades, this structure was expanded, reorganised and transformed into what is now Exor.

Juventus therefore remained under family control not simply because successive generations maintained an emotional attachment to the club. Its continuity was also sustained by a corporate structure capable of outliving the individuals who created it.

This distinction is fundamental.

Affection may explain why a family wishes to retain a particular asset. Only structure, however, determines how control will be exercised, transferred and protected across generations.

The Governance Structure That Preserves Control

The Agnelli family's control of Juventus is not exercised directly by dozens of descendants gathered around a table.

Between the family and the club sits a network of companies, economic interests and voting mechanisms that organise ownership.

At the first level is Giovanni Agnelli B.V., a Dutch company whose shares are owned by the descendants of Fiat's founder. As of 31 December 2025, it held 54.94% of Exor's economic rights and 83.97% of its voting rights.

The difference between economic ownership and voting power results from the existence of special voting shares. Exor itself states that the principal purpose of Giovanni Agnelli B.V. is to preserve the unity and continuity of its controlling interest in the holding company.

The next level is Exor's investment in Juventus. The holding company owns 65.4% of the club's economic rights and 78.1% of its voting rights.

The ownership chain can be summarised as follows:

Descendants of Giovanni Agnelli → Giovanni Agnelli B.V. → Exor → Juventus

This is far more than a sequence of legal entities. It is a structure designed to concentrate decision-making authority, accommodate external investors and preserve family control.

The case demonstrates why succession planning cannot be reduced to the transfer of shares.

A family may distribute economic ownership among its heirs while preserving unified control. Equally, it may transfer ownership interests without organising voting rights and discover, in the following generation, that although the assets remain intact, no one possesses sufficient legitimacy to lead them.

The relevant question is not simply who will inherit the assets. It is who will have the authority to make decisions about them.

Ownership Does Not Mean Managing the Business

Another important feature of the Agnelli structure is its clear separation of ownership, governance and management.

The family does not need to occupy the presidency or the executive leadership of Juventus on a permanent basis in order to retain control. As the controlling shareholder, Exor exercises decisive influence over the composition of the company's governing bodies and over matters submitted to shareholders for approval. Day-to-day management, however, may be entrusted to professional executives.

This separation represents one of the most challenging transitions for family businesses.

Founders typically combine ownership, strategic authority, executive leadership and family authority in a single individual. As the business grows and new generations enter the ownership structure, maintaining this concentration of roles becomes increasingly difficult.

Heir, shareholder, director and executive are distinct roles. Each requires different competencies and carries different rights and responsibilities.

Professionalisation does not require the family to step away from the business. Rather, it means that the family's involvement is no longer dependent upon the automatic occupation of executive positions.

An owning family can define the long-term vision, appoint executives, approve strategic decisions, evaluate performance and safeguard the values it considers essential without directly assuming every management function.

The real challenge lies in establishing criteria capable of determining when the presence of a family member genuinely adds value and when it exists solely because of the family name.

The Value That Does Not Appear on the Balance Sheet

The family business literature uses the concept of socioemotional wealth to explain the non-financial benefits that a family derives from the organisation it controls.

These benefits may include identity, influence, reputation, a sense of belonging, emotional attachment and the desire to pass control on to future generations. Socioemotional wealth helps explain why family businesses do not always make decisions based exclusively on maximising financial returns.

The relationship between the Agnelli family and Juventus is consistent with this theoretical framework.

This conclusion should be understood as an analytical inference, rather than a statement made by the family itself. Exor has not stated that it rejected Tether's proposal in order to preserve its socioemotional wealth. The full internal motivations behind the decision are not publicly available.

What can be stated is that the family has retained control for more than one hundred years, publicly describes its relationship with the club in terms of pride and commitment, and has expressly declared that it has no intention of selling its stake.

The theory helps explain why an asset may be valued according to criteria that extend beyond cash flow, capital appreciation or financial performance.

Socioemotional wealth, however, does not necessarily lead to better decisions.

A strong identification between the family and the business may encourage a long-term perspective, commitment and protection of the organisation's reputation. It may also foster resistance to change, excessive tolerance towards family members and an inability to recognise when a particular strategy has ceased to be effective.

The literature also warns that the non-financial objectives of controlling families may become dysfunctional when they begin to protect personal interests, family relationships or positions of power at the expense of the organisation itself.

The problem, therefore, is not that emotions exist. It is allowing them to remain implicit and beyond critical scrutiny.

When Legacy Cannot Replace Governance Controls

Andrea Agnelli's presidency illustrates both sides of family leadership.

He assumed the presidency in 2010 and led Juventus through a period of significant sporting success, commercial expansion and international brand development.

That cycle, however, ended amid a serious institutional crisis.

In November 2022, following legal, technical and accounting issues relating to the club's financial statements, all members of the Board of Directors present at the meeting resigned from their positions. Independent director Daniela Marilungo separately stated that she did not believe she had been provided with the conditions of independence, transparency and access to information necessary to perform her duties given the complexity of the matters under consideration. The Board formally recorded that it did not share her assessment.

In 2023, UEFA's Club Financial Control Body concluded that Juventus had breached its regulatory framework and failed to comply with a previously agreed settlement. The club was excluded from the 2023/24 men's UEFA competitions and received a financial sanction of €20 million, of which €10 million was conditional upon compliance with subsequent accounting requirements.

These events do not justify the conclusion that family involvement is incompatible with good governance. Nor do they negate the achievements accomplished during that period.

They demonstrate that tradition, reputation and performance cannot substitute for reliable information, robust internal controls, independent oversight and the accountability of those responsible for managing the organisation.

The stronger the identification between a family and an organisation, the greater the need for governance bodies capable of challenging decisions.

Legacy may provide historical legitimacy. It cannot provide institutional immunity.

What Other Business Families Can Learn from the Agnellis

The first lesson lies in the distinction between transferring wealth and preserving control.

The Agnelli structure distinguishes economic rights from voting rights. This enables external investors to participate without the family automatically relinquishing its ability to determine the strategic direction of both the holding company and the club.

In other business families, this type of structure may involve holding companies, shareholders' agreements, different classes of shares, voting arrangements or other mechanisms permitted under the applicable legal framework. The legal instruments will vary according to each family's circumstances. The underlying principle, however, remains the same: economic ownership and decision-making authority do not have to be distributed in identical proportions.

The second lesson concerns the separation of roles.

Ownership succession should not be confused with executive succession. A descendant may become an owner without taking on management responsibilities. Equally, an external executive may manage the business without owning it.

The third lesson concerns the definition of legacy assets.

When an asset represents more than financial return, that reality must be explicitly recognised and discussed. The family should define what it intends to preserve, why it wishes to preserve it and the extent to which it is prepared to commit resources to maintaining it.

It should also establish who has the authority to decide on a potential sale, which criteria must be applied and how the interests of family members requiring liquidity will be addressed.

Without these rules, the idea of legacy may become little more than an emotional justification for resisting any form of change.

The fourth lesson concerns the limits of trust.

Long-standing family relationships do not eliminate the need for governance controls. On the contrary, the greater the concentration of power and the more symbolic the asset, the more important transparency, independent directors and high-quality information become in supporting sound decision-making.

Legacy Does Not Mean Standing Still

The structure that keeps the Agnelli family in control of Juventus is not the same as the one that existed in 1923.

Over more than a century, companies were reorganised, new generations entered the ownership structure, professional executives assumed leadership responsibilities and the economic nature of football itself underwent profound transformation.

Continuity was achieved not because everything remained unchanged, but because the structure evolved without the family abandoning what it considered fundamental.

This is perhaps the case's most important lesson.

Preserving a legacy does not mean retaining the same people, management models or corporate structures indefinitely. It means understanding what genuinely deserves to endure and building institutions capable of protecting it without preventing necessary transformation.

Business families do not have to choose between emotion and rationality.

They need to establish a governance framework that recognises both, allocates decision-making authority with clarity and prevents major ownership decisions from being taken only after a crisis has already begun.

Because the greatest risk is not necessarily selling an important asset.

It is reaching the moment of decision without knowing who has the authority to decide, what the family actually wishes to preserve, or how much it is prepared to commit in the name of that legacy.

If your family needs to organise decision-making rights, separate ownership from management or establish governance principles for preserving strategic assets, a governance discussion can help identify these issues before they develop into conflict.

Schedule a strategic consultation.