The heir to the Ferrero Rocher millions has died in a cycling accident in South Africa.\nPietro Ferrero fell from his bike on Monday whilst on a business trip.
\nIt is thought the 47-year-old, CEO of the Ferrero Group, may have suffered a heart attack, prompting the fatal fall.
\nA Ferrero company spokesperson said that Mr Ferrero, a cycling enthusiast, was riding a bike on his usual training run on a road in Cape Town when he fell off.
\nHe was on a business trip in the country at the time of the accident.
\nWith him on the trip was his father, Michele Ferrero, who turned the company into an international sweets producer and invented successes including Nutella and Kinder in the 1960s.
\nMr Ferrero\u2019s grandfather, also called Pietro, started the company in 1942, supplying products for a pastry shop run by his wife, in Alba, in the Piedmont region of Italy.
\nBecause it was hard to obtain ingredients for sweets during the Second World War, the elder Pietro Ferrero decided to exploit something Piedmont had in abundance – hazelnuts – and invented a confection using a sweet paste made from the nut.
\nThe company\u2019s line of products went international under the leadership of Michele Ferrero, son of the founder, who was the driving force behind the company\u2019s international expansions, starting with Germany in 1956, and then moving into Eastern Europe, Russia and Latin America in the 1990s.
\nThe company, which also makes Tic Tac mints, has more than 20,000 employees worldwide and makes more than ?6billion a year.
\nMr Ferrero, began working in Ferrero Germany in 1985 before moving to the company headquarters in Alba, where he worked in a technical and production role.
\nIn 1992, he took on the responsibility of managing operations in the European division of the Ferrero group.
\nHe was currently the CEO of Ferrero International S.A., the Luxembourg-based holding group of Ferrero Group, and chairman of Ferrero, S.p.A., the Italian branch of the Group.
\nThe family was company\u2019s only shareholder.
\nItaly\u2019s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini described Ferrero as a \u2018businessman of exceptional talent, gifted with strategic vision and deep sensibility\u2019 for Italy\u2019s overall interests.
\nHe said Ferrero \u2018knew how to embody the best qualities of our industrial history – the continued search for excellence, creativity, the determination to compete even in difficult moments to strengthen one\u2019s brand to the point that it becomes a symbol\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"