German billionaire Adolf Merckle commits suicide

Adolf Merckle, a German selfmade billionaire ranking #44 in the Forbes Billionaires list, committed suicide on January 6th, 2009 throwinfg himself in front of a train. After wild speculations with buyouts of companies and a recent one billion €  loss on short selling of Volkswagen shares, he was forced to turn over his “imperium” to the banks. Unfortunately he did not run a bank by himself. Thus he could not get government guarantees for his bad loans.

Adolf Merckle was a typical “tough” manager playing tricks on various legal borderlines to acquire a wide various companies which employ nearly 100 000 people. One of his hobbies was to buy forest from the peerage of Germany, running in financial troubles.  In some parts of Southern Germany 40% ofthe forest was owned by Adlof Merckle.  Certainly the crash of his enterprise was a major rason for committing suicide. However, another reason was that none of his four sons was willing to take over the family business  and work in the same “style” as the father. One of his sons dropped out of the family business  and declared only to work for “real” value with his part of the family fortune. Certainly Adolf Merckle found managers willing to work the same style as the company owner finally resulting in the crash of his whole Merckle empire. Although Adolf Merckle’s suicide is probably the most spectucular suicide as a result of the financial crisis it is not the first and probably not the last .  There are other similiar suicides in the finance world e.g. in the UK.  In contrast live seems to be easier in the US. e.g. Bernard Madoff seems to plan a restart with his and his wives family jewels although his fraud caused at least the suicide of Rene-Thierry Magon de Villehucher, a french aristocrat.

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