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Economy

German Billionaire Merckle Takes His Life Amidst Financial Crisis

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Another prominent figure has reportedly taken his life amidst the turmoil of the financial markets.  In this case, it appears that 74 year-old German billionaire Adolf Merckle has committed suicide.  German newspaper Die Welt noted that the head of the family business empire was worth an estimated 7 billion euros (nearly $10 billion).

Merckle is, or was, on Forbes list of the 100 most wealthy.  Theinterests of the family control HeidelbergCement and otherconglomerated interests which employ more than 100,000 people with anannual revenue base of roughly 30 billion euros.

Merckle recently was credited with garnering a last minute bridge loanfor the interests, but he is also said to be one of the ones caught upon the wrong side of the exponential move seen in theVolkswagen-Porsche SNAFU of late-2008.

It appears that Merckle killed himself by stepping in front of atrain, although we won’t go into further detail for many reasons. 

Financial loss is starting to take on new extremes.

Jon C. Ogg
January 6, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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