The chairman of Italian carmaker Fiat, Mr Umberto Agnelli, died late last night from cancer.
Mr Agnelli (69) took over the top job last year shortly after his brother, Gianni, died from cancer in January 2003 at the age of 81.
The news could raise fresh uncertainty about the commitment to Italy's largest industrial group of the Agnelli family, which founded the carmaker more than 100 years ago.
Fiat has been battling its worst business crisis and its banks have an option to convert a €3 billion loan into equity from 2005 which could make them the automaker's top shareholders, supplanting family holding Ifil.
Mr Umberto Agnelli was once considered open to the idea of selling Fiat's loss-making auto operations but he shifted direction after taking over and pinned the company's future on the core businesses of car and truck manufacturing.
To millions of soccer fans, Mr Agnelli was best known as the honorary chairman of Juventus, which has won more Italian championships than any other team.
Umberto Agnelli's son Giovannino, who was being groomed to take over the family business, died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 33. In 2000, Gianni Agnelli's son Edoardo, who never came to terms with the huge weight of his family ancestry, committed suicide by leaping from a viaduct.
Umberto's father Edoardo died in a plane crash in 1935 and his mother in a car accident three years later.
With Agnelli's death, the family leadership mantle passes to a much younger generation who have little experience in managing a company whose success was emblematic of Italy's post-war economic boom.