 Plesch was a mentor to Italy's richest man, Gianni Agnelli, the late head of Fiat.Busson's aunt, Joanna Harcourt-Smith, was a companion of Timothy Leary, who coincidentally was married in the early 1960s to the mother of Arpad's partner, Uma Thurman.Some sources have suggested that, while growing up in France, Busson made early profits selling toothpicks door-to-door (which he denies), but he was educated in France and at the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland.