Family-backed money manager Agnelli Lingotto expands into the US

One of the most interesting asset managers in Europe has arrived in America.

Lingotto Investment Management, with $6 billion in assets under management, has generated plenty of intrigue in its short existence. It was formed in 2023 by Exor, the holding company for the Agnelli family fortune, which owns Fiat, Ferrari, The Economist and Italian soccer team Juventus.

Lingotto was launched as an investment house giving incumbent portfolio managers a sleeve of capital and free range to invest — some bets include a private German robotics company and CBS parent Paramount. The firm, which was founded by billionaire Agnelli heir John Elkann and whose chairman is former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, has raised billions in outside capital and is operated separately from Exor.

Now the manager is expanding to New York, where it already has 14 employees, including investment talent, on the ground. The 50-person, London-based firm considers New York and London to be its “two pillars,” Enrico Vellano, CEO of Lingotto, said in an interview with Business Insider.

“The idea is to continue to grow and invest in the US, but also in the United Kingdom,” he said.

The firm has lured James Anderson, a star tech investor and former Baillie Gifford partner, and BlackRock executive Pam Chan to run different strategies. Matteo Scolari and Nikhil Srinivasan, two long-time investors associated with Exor, manage their books.

Investors’ focus is across the board — limited partner stocks in other funds, public tech companies, the odd private opportunity — and they can pursue their ideas on their own timelines, which can span years, without continuous involvement by a central risk manager or comprehensive investment commitment. This proposition has been attractive to portfolio managers as well as potential backers.

“Each team is empowered and very independent,” said Scolari, whose ties to the Agnelli family go back a generation to when his father worked as head of research and development at Fiat decades ago. In an interview with BI, he said that the structure set the firm apart.

“I think that’s really important – I really believe in that approach,” he added.

A different model

The firm doesn’t like the word “platform,” but it’s impossible to avoid comparisons between today’s dominant multistrategy managers and Lingotto. These platforms have become some of the biggest names in alternative investing, in part because they can absorb so much capital from sovereign wealth funds and pensions and diversify it across dozens of investment teams.

The industry’s largest investors prefer multi-strategy funds because of their consistency and lack of volatility, which they achieve through narrow risk margins and short investment horizons.

Lingotto employs multiple investors that operate almost independently of each other, such as Citadel and Millennium. But the similarities between Lingotto and larger hedge funds end there.

In Lingotto, the final authority over its four strategies rests with the leaders of said strategies. There is no firm-wide chief investment officer, but four different CIOs.

“I really liked the idea of ​​autonomy,” Anderson said in an interview with BI. He leads the firm’s $700 million innovation strategy alongside Morgan Samet, strategy fellow who has worked for value investment shop Pzena and private equity firm THL.

The innovation team plans to invest in companies throughout their lifecycle, including when they are private, and sustain them through volatile patches.

“You have to be prepared to suffer,” said Anderson, who was an early investor in Tesla and Amazon and a big believer in Nvidia’s potential.

“Where we earn our returns is by being supportive of these companies during their downturn,” he added.

The long-term nature of the firm’s capital, thanks to Exor’s role in forming the company, allows Anderson and Samet—and the firm’s three other chief strategists—to worry less about short-term gains and more about long-term ideas.

“We are not afraid of volatility,” said Samet.

“We see this as one more opportunity,” she added.

Agnelli, through and through

While the firm wants to be seen as more than just the investment arm of the Agnelli family – and already has outside capital from French insurer Covéa – Lingotto is the brainchild of Elkann, the billionaire heir.

In a public letter after opening the firm, Elkann quoted 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith to emphasize how his family would invest alongside any outside capital.

“Above all, we think and act as leaders, not agents,” he wrote. Lingotto, named after an iconic Fiat factory in Turin, Italy, with a rooftop test track that began operations in 1923, plans to grow through “performance rather than capital inflows,” he added.

Nikhil Srinivasan, a long-time investor associated with Exor.
Lingotto

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Matteo Scolari’s ties to the Agnelli family go back a generation.
Taurat Hossain for BI

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The first to implement the strategies for the firm were a couple with long family ties, Scolari and Srinivasan, who now lead the crossover and horizon strategies respectively. Scolari previously worked for Eton Park, the now-defunct hedge fund founded by ex-Goldman Sachs partner Eric Mindich, and has directed money for the Agnelli family since 2014.

Srinivasan, meanwhile, was chief investment officer at Allianz Investment Management and a partner of HPS before joining Exor in 2018.

The pair have very different strategies – Scolari runs a concentrated public equity book, while Srinivasan manages a portfolio of other funds as well as direct investments in private companies – but similar experiences working at the firm.

Without the pressures of running a business, the two chief investment officers can focus on their core business: investing.

“You have a pool of capital, you have confidence from LPs and GPs and you have clarity about what you’re supposed to do from an investment standpoint,” said Srinivasan, who invests in companies around the globe and spoke. with BI from Singapore.

“The stresses created are our stresses,” he added.

People-focused construction

With the firm’s momentum and reputation on the rise, it may seem like the next step would be a significant hiring spree to move up the ranks even further.

While Lingotto executives are always looking for top people, Vellano said the firm wanted the right people for the structure, not just more people.

Chan, a former BlackRock private markets executive, is one example.

Chan, who is based in New York and heads Mosaic’s strategy, said her portfolio was focused on parts of the private markets that don’t fit neatly into the buckets of larger private asset managers. Right now, for example, it has its sights set on the content industry, including non-traditional players like YouTube creators.

“Innovation is a big part of what we do,” she said. It was early in the music rights business, something that massive asset managers like KKR have now entered. She focuses on areas where there is a “capital demand-supply imbalance,” a time-intensive strategy that requires her and her team to scour the market for deals.

She said Lingotto’s structure gives it the bandwidth to do this while “allowing investors to invest”.

It fits well into Vellano’s vision.

“We will remain a boutique” that focuses on “quality investors and LPs,” he said, adding, “It’s important that we have that reach.”