In killing himself German billionaire Adolf Merckle has become the latest casualty of the global financial crisis, his family saying on Tuesday he was broken by the struggle to salvage their business empire. Merckle, who was the world's 94th-richest person in 2008 according to Forbes magazine, spent his life building a business conglomerate with about 100,000 employees.
The empire was poised to come crashing down after his family made wrong-way bets on skyrocketing Volkswagen shares.
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