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HeidelbergCement’s major shareholder dies of suspected suicide - Adolf Merckle dies after being hit by train
Jan, 06 2009
(Germany) -- German billionaire Adolf Merckle, whose investment company was renegotiating its bank debt, died after he was hit by a train and may have committed suicide, Die Welt reported.
Merckle was struck near his hometown of Blaubeuren, southeast of Stuttgart, yesterday evening, the German newspaper said on its Web site today. Police said he may have killed himself, the newspaper said.
Merckle had lost money from a series of wrong-way bets on Volkswagen AG, a drop in the value of his HeidelbergCement AG stake and increasing debt. The 74-year-old, whose estimated $9.2 billion fortune put him 94th on Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people, was negotiating with banks on a bridge loan to rescue his investment company VEM Vermoegensverwaltung GmbH.
HeidelbergCement stock dropped as much as 13 percent to 29.16 euros. Calls to the company and VEM went unanswered when Bloomberg called.
Merckle was to get more than 400 million euros ($547 million) in bridge loans to rescue VEM, Financial Times Deutschland reported yesterday, citing unidentified bankers.
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