BERLIN—(UPDATE) German billionaire Adolf Merckle has been driven to suicide by financial fears, becoming the latest high-profile casualty of a global economic crisis that has claimed the lives of executives in Europe and the United States.
Merckle, 74, a respected businessman with a wife and four children, jumped in front of a train in the town of Blaubeuren in southwestern Germany, officials said on Tuesday. His body was found Monday night on the railway tracks.
In 2008, the media-shy billionaire was ranked as the world’s 94th richest person and Germany’s fifth wealthiest by Forbes magazine.
Hours before Merckle’s death, Steven Good, the head of one of the largest US real estate auction houses, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in the United States.
Good, 52, was discovered parked in a forest preserve near Chicago on Monday morning, the Kane County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday.
Merckle’s family, which had reported him missing after he failed to return home on Monday, issued a brief statement saying he killed himself.
“The distress to his firms caused by the financial crisis and the related uncertainties of recent weeks, along with the helplessness of no longer being able to act, broke the passionate family businessman, and he ended his life,” his family said.
Merckle’s business empire included pharmaceuticals (Ratiopharm) and cement (HeidelbergCement), and its troubles had recently been compounded by losses on shares in auto maker Volkswagen AG.
Authorities said Merckle left a suicide note to his family but that its contents were not divulged.
3rd suicide
Merckle’s death appears to be at least the third comparable suicide in less than four months.
In September, Kirk Stephenson—the chief operating officer of private equity house Olivant—jumped in front of a train at a rail station west of London.
The 47-year-old husband and father of a young son stepped onto the tracks, was struck and killed.
A British coroner ruled last month that the death was suicide, though the precise reasons remain a mystery. Stephenson left no suicide note.
Two days before Christmas, in New York, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet was found dead at his desk, both wrists slashed and a bottle of pills nearby.
His fortune and the money of his loved ones vanished along with his clients’ funds when he lost $1.4 billion invested with Wall Street titan Bernard Madoff.
The Frenchman’s fund was among the biggest losers in the Madoff fraud, and one of a handful to get taken for more than $1 billion.
“He was totally ruined,” his brother, Bertrand Magon de la Villehuchet, told The Associated Press in Paris last month. “At first he thought he’d be able to get the money back. He was very determined. Gradually, he realized he wouldn’t be able to.”
There was no note found in Steven Good’s red Jaguar indicating a motive, and it was yet unclear whether his death was related to his work.
Good was the chair and chief executive of Chicago-based Sheldon Good & Company Auctions International.
The firm says it has sold over 40,000 properties at an aggregate total of over $9.5 billion since it was founded by Good’s father in 1965.
Good was the driving force behind the firm’s expansion and was involved in $4 billion in sales, according to a company biography.
Company president Alan Kravets hailed Good as “one of his industry’s most brilliant minds and most successful entrepreneurs,” and offered his condolences to Good’s wife, children and father.
“It is testimony to Steve’s leadership that Sheldon Good & Company remains well positioned for the future,” Kravets said in a statement.
Tipping point
Dr. Charles Goodstein, a psychiatrist at the New York University School of Medicine and a past president of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York, said Merckle could have been distraught over other issues.
“We don’t know those things, so therefore the economic problems may have been the tipping point and that sent him over the edge,” Goodstein said, adding:
“To limit it solely to the issue of finance may be a big mistake.”
According to the family statement, Merckle “lived and worked for his family and his firms.”
He inherited the basis of his fortune from his Bohemian grandfather, but went on to build up the chemical wholesale company into Germany’s largest drugs wholesaler.
$40.45B in annual sales
The skier and mountain climber assembled a business conglomerate with about 100,000 employees and 30 billion euros ($40.45 billion) in annual sales.
But the empire was rocked last year by wrong-way bets made on shares in Volkswagen after a surprise stakeholding announcement from Porsche sent the VW share price rocketing as short sellers scrambled to cover their positions.
Banking sources had told Reuters that the family lost hundreds of millions of euros on investments, with about 400 million euros lost on Volkswagen shares alone.
Since then, the family has been in talks for weeks with banks to renegotiate loans.
Banking sources said on Tuesday that Merckle’s death was not expected to affect loan agreements with the family.
