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A German billionaire brought to the brink of ruin by the financial crisis has committed suicide, his family said on Tuesday after his body was found near train tracks in south-west Germany.
Little known outside Germany, Adolf Merckle headed the world's 94th biggest fortune, according to Forbes magazine, worth over nine billion dollars (6.7 billion euros) through interests in the cement and pharmaceuticals industries.
But it was not only the global financial crisis that was his financial undoing. He was also reported to have squandered a considerable amount of his fortune after betting the wrong way on Volkswagen shares last year.
Merckle's family did not say how the 74-year-old died but prosecutors in Ulm in south-west Germany said that a body believed to be his had been found near train tracks not far from his home.
Police have "clear signals" that the body was that of Merckle, prosecutors said in a statement, but the corpse was in such a state that DNA tests were necessary before a positive identification could be made.
"His family had reported him as missing on (Monday) evening. He had left the house during the afternoon and had not come home as expected," the statement said.
The family said that the damage done by the financial crisis and the "powerlessness of not being able to do anything, broke this passionate family businessman and he ended his life."
"Adolf Merckle lived and worked for his family and his companies," the family said in a statement.
His VEM holding company controls pharma group Ratiopharm, building materials giant HeidelbergCement and one of Europe's biggest wholesale drug distributors, Phoenix.
But he made a huge loss in a bet on shares in VW, Europe's biggest carmaker, which swung violently up and down in late 2008, briefly making it the world's most valuable firm by market capitalisation.
Just when he should have been enjoying the quiet life and arranging a seamless succession to his four sons, the debacle meant he had to go cap-in-hand to banks to persuade them to bail him and his empire out.
These talks appeared to be nearing a satisfactory conclusion, with a spokeswoman for VEM saying over the Christmas period that Merckle and around 30 creditor banks were near to a deal.
Born in Dresden in eastern Germany in 1934, he inherited in his mid-30s a pharma company from his father with just 80 employees.
Step by step, Merckle built this up into a powerhouse with 100,000 workers on the payroll and annual sales of around 35 billion euros, lording over it in 19th century style where unions were not made to feel welcome.
He embodied the type of shrewd family businessman that form the backbone of Europe's biggest economy, and in particular that of the rich Swabia region of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
Merckle was man of unremarkable and granddad-like appearance who enjoyed mountain holidays in the Andes and Himalayas.
He avoided publicity and lived relatively frugally and unostentatiously in the small town of Blaubeuren.
"I have already survived quite a lot of 'stock market crashes'," Merckle said in a rare press interview last month. "But I was not prepared for a banking and financial crisis on this scale."
