(ANSA) - Turin, January 10 - A case
brought by the daughter of the late Fiat president Gianni Agnelli contesting the
execution of his will opened here on Thursday but was adjourned after only 90
minutes.
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen, the only surviving
child of the late Fiat patriarch, is suing her father's most trusted advisers in
a dispute over the management of his vast estate.
She filed suit against Franzo Grande Stevens,
Gianluigi Gabetti and Siegfrid Maron, managers of Agnelli's inheritance, in
order to obtain a fuller accounting of his estate.
Also cited in the suit is her mother, Marella
Caracciolo Agnelli, who has defended the executors of her husband's will and
claims Margherita received more than ample compensation for being excluded from
family business affairs.
Margherita Agnelli's actions have also been
criticized by her eldest son, John Elkann, who has been groomed to take over the
family empire and is already deputy chairman of both Fiat and the family
financial holding company IFIL.
Stevens - the Agnelli family's chief legal advisor -
and Gabetti have official roles in the Agnelli family's trust, Giovanni Agnelli
& C., which holds a 30% stake in Fiat through two quoted holding companies,
IFI and IFIL.
Maron is a private adviser with no official role in
the family holdings.
Thursday's hearing was adjourned after lawyers for
those cited in the suit called into question the court's jurisdiction in the
case.
Gianni Agnelli, one of the most powerful businessmen
in postwar Italy and whose grandfather founded the carmaker in 1899, died on
January 23, 2003 at the age of 81 after a long battle against prostate cancer.
Agnelli also had a son, Edoardo, but he committed
suicide in November 2000 at the age of 46, leaping to his death from a motorway
bridge.
The case brought by Margherita Agnelli opened almost
five years after her father's death and on the same day that a major exhibition
opened in Rome dedicated to the charismatic Fiat chief.
The exhibit was inaugurated by Italian President
Giorgio Napolitano with Fiat's current top brass, including Chairman Luca
Cordero di Montezemolo and CEO Sergio Marchionne, attending along with Marella
Caracciolo Agnelli.
Napolitano defined Agnelli as a ''visionary'' who was
''one of the men who most helped to define Italian society in the latter decades
of the past century''.
All members of the Agnelli family present at the
inauguration - including Margherita's children John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann,
along with Gianni Agnelli's sisters Susanna and Mira Sole - made no comments to
the press regarding the hearing in Turin.
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen was the only adult
family member absent at the exhibition opening.
