Grandstander in the family
When Italian handbag and luggage maker Guccio Gucci retired, handing over to his sons a fortune and the reins of the flourishing business he had created over his lifetime, he didn’t intend to set in motion a chain of events that would see one son sent to prison, one grandson dying penniless, and another grandson, Maurizio, mercilessly shot in the head at work. Businesses forged by passion, and sealed together with familial blood, were supposed to be stalwart investments – impenetrable, private, nimble-footed. And the Gucci label, a multimillion-dollar juggernaut, had been all of this; until, that is, the family started warring.
“What makes war break out in a family?” writes Grant Gordon and Nigel Nicholson in the book, . The authors argue that familial wars are not unlike societal wars over political or economic matters. “Siblings try to outmanoeuvre
