Ferrero Rocher chief dies
PIETRO Ferrero, joint chief executive of the Italian chocolate-making group Ferrero, has died in an accident.
The confectionery giant behind Nutella spread and Rocher chocolates said in a statement that Pietro, 48, was riding a bike during a training run in Cape Town while on a business trip to South Africa when he fell off.
Ferrero, which in over 60 years has turned itself into a €6bn (£5.25bn) business without making an acquisition, has recently expressed its interest in buying Parmalat, the multinational Italian dairy and food corporation, to keep it out of foreign hands.
The business is still family-owned and patriarch Michele Ferrero, son of company founder Pietro Ferrero, the man who invented Nutella in 1946, is Italy’s richest man with a personal wealth of $17bn (£10.45bn), according to Forbes.