Italian Court Fines Agnelli Family Advisers

An Italian appeals court has found two former advisers to Fiat SpA's Agnelli founding family guilty of market manipulation. The ruling overturned their acquittal in 2010.

The court gave ex-Ifil SpA Chairman Gianluigi Gabetti and former legal counsel Franzo Grande Stevens 16-month suspended sentences and ordered each to pay a €600,000 fine.

Ifil was the holding company for the Agnelli family's 30.1% Fiat stake until 2009, when it was folded into a new holding entity, Exor SpA.

The guilty verdicts stem from 2005 when Ifil told regulators it was not buying Fiat shares ahead of a stock offering that would have diluted the holding company's stake. Later Ifil admitted it had purchased more than 82 million Fiat shares through a complicated share swap.

Ifil and parent IFI SpA were folded into a new holding company, Exor SpA, in 2009.