Fiat Chairman Agnelli to Retire, Managing Director to Take Reins

Italian car maker Fiat’s chairman, Gianni Agnelli, said Monday that he will step down in a few months and that Managing Director Cesare Romiti will take his place at the helm of the company.

Agnelli, 74, made the announcement at a traditional end-of-year meeting with the top management of the group--by far Italy’s largest private company, with interests in cars, trucks, civil engineering and insurance.

A company official said Agnelli told top managers gathered at Fiat headquarters in Turin that he intends to maintain a close relationship with the group.

Agnelli is chairman of IFI, a family holding company, and heads a shareholders syndicate that controls Fiat.

Although speculation over Agnelli’s future had been mounting in recent months, the suddenness of the announcement surprised some analysts. Agnelli, who has been in poor health, had been widely expected to step down at the company’s next annual shareholders meeting, scheduled for May. He underwent heart surgery in April.

Agnelli, a grandson of the founder of the Fiat industrial empire, has headed one of Europe’s most powerful industrial dynasties for nearly 30 years. Chairmanship of the group now passes to a man who is only two years younger than Agnelli but who is a confidant of the family and has, in effect, run the company for more than a decade.