LAST RESORT
You know things are getting really serious on the economic front when billionaires start to commit suicide. Today's news of German billionaire stepping in front of a train is quite jarring:
"German billionaire Adolf Merckle
committed suicide by throwing himself under a train, “broken”
as his business empire crumbled under a growing burden of debt,
his family said.
The 74 year-old businessman was hit yesterday evening near his hometown of Blaubeuren, 44 miles southeast of Stuttgart, a police officer said in an interview. His body was found on the tracks at around 7:30 p.m. about 300 yards from his home and a suicide note had also been found.
Merckle, whose holding company owes banks about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion), owned stakes in HeidelbergCement AG and drug wholesaler Phoenix Pharmahandel AG. He had been seeking emergency financing for more than two months from a group of more than 30 banks led by Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.
“The dedicated family businessman was broken by his inability to handle the situation and he ended his own life,” his family said in a statement today. “The distress at his companies caused by the financial crisis and the resultant uncertainty of the last few weeks” contributed to his death, the family added.
Merckle, whose estimated $9.2 billion fortune put him 94th on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, was hurt by bets on Volkswagen AG, a drop in the value of HeidelbergCement stock and increasing debt. The family’s spiraling debt threatened holdings including its VEM Vermoegensverwaltung GmbH holding company, which owed the bank about 5 billion euros, people with knowledge of the matter said last month."
This follows the suicide of a French investment manager in late December in the wake of the Madoff news:
"The French financier who killed himself after losing more than $1 billion of his clients' investments to Bernard Madoff's alleged fraud also saw his own family's money disappear, his older brother told The Associated Press on Friday.
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet and his business partner Patrick Littaye were "totally ruined," Bertrand Magon de la Villehuchet said in a telephone interview from his home on Paris' chic Place des Vosges.
Bertrand, 74, said his brother had "invested his own fortune" with Madoff — up to several tens of millions of dollars — along with money from friends and family."
Unlike the 1929 crash we thankfully don't have people jumping out of windows yet. But the pain of extreme financial distress is starting to take it's toll. Here's hoping we see no more of this.
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