Top Business News

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, April 18 (UPI) -- Pietro Ferrero, honcho executive of the European candy consort that makes Tic Tac and Nutella, has died while bicycling in South Africa, his firm said Monday.

The European news service Agenzia Giornalistica Italia reportable the Ferrero Group issued a statement confirming "with unfathomable dismay" that its 47-year-old honcho executive tar had died.

"He lapse during his routine bike ride, probably having been taken ill," the statement said. "This happened in South Africa, where he was on a impact mission.

"At the moment, we only impact shreds of information. We don't impact the information regarding the circumstances close the incident at our disposal."

The Daily Telegraph said Ferrero was reportable to impact been impact by a car, though it said details were not known.

CNN reportable European Foreign Minister Franco Frattini released a statement mourning Ferrero as "a bourgeois who represented the prizewinning qualities of our scheme history."

Ferrero, who has a spouse and three children, ran the consort with his brother Giovanni.

The brothers are the sons of 85-year-old Michele Ferrero -- said to be the richest man in Italy and the 32nd-richest in the concern -- and the grandsons of consort founders Piera and Pietro Ferrero.