Piero Ferrari Sets Up Succession Plan With Trust Fund For His Stake In The Supercar Firm

Piero Ferrari, son of the Italian supercar marque’s founder, Enzo Ferrari, is reportedly working on his succession plan. A report on Bloomberg, quoting a US regulatory filing, says that the 77-year-old billionaire has decided to set up a family trust this month which will oversee the roughly 10 per cent stake he inherited from his father. Piero Ferrari is currently the second largest shareholder in Ferrari NV, and has a net worth of about $4.6 billion, with most of his wealth tied up in the Italian automaker.

The beneficiaries of the trust fund created by Piero Ferrari will be his daughter Antonella and grandsons Enzo Mattioli Ferrari and Piero Galassi Ferrari. Having said that Piero will continue to have voting control over the shares during his lifetime. Piero has transferred the "bare ownership" of its shares to the trust, whose value amounts to around 4 billion euros (over Rs. 35,000 crore) at current prices.

Piero Ferrari's fortune has seen tremendous growth in recent years, after Ferrari’s stocks gained more than 300 per cent since it was listed in New York, in 2015.

Creating the trust will in no way affect the agreement that Piero reached in late 2015 with Exor NV, the holding company of the billionaire Agnelli family and Ferrari's largest shareholder, which has nearly 24 per cent stake in the company. Exor holds around 35 per cent of voting rights as well.

Piero Ferrari's fortune has seen tremendous growth in recent years, after Ferrari’s stocks gained more than 300 per cent since it was listed in New York, in 2015. Additionally, Piero Ferrari also owns a stake in Italian luxury yacht builder Ferretti Group, and he is the Chairman of the engineering services firm HPE COXA.

As for the Maranello-based company, it is currently working on turning its historic factory in northern Italy into a hub for battery-powered cars. Ferrari plans to invest about 4.4 billion euros (Rs. 39,000 crore) to develop fully electric and plug-in hybrid models that will comprise 60 per cent of its portfolio by 2026, Chief Executive Officer Benedetto Vigna said in June during the company's capital markets day.

Source: Bloomberg