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Head of debt-ridden Chinese sugar firm dies - Xinhua
17 Oct 2008 12:43:59 GMT
 Source: Reuters
BEIJING, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The head of a major Chinese sugar company that fell deep into debt following bad bets on the futures market fell to his death from his 23rd-floor apartment this week, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

Pang Guixiong, 46, chairman of the privately-owned Guangdong Zogood Group, died on Wednesday after the fall from his home in Zhanjiang, in the southern province of Guangdong, Xinhua cited a local police spokesman as saying.

He had been under pressure from "a growing number of creditors" to repay debts believed to total around 1 billion yuan ($146 million), Xinhua cited unnamed company sources as saying.

"Sources in the company said he had been suffering from severe stress," Xinhua said.

Police are still investigating the cause of the fall and have frozen all of Zogood's assets for now, Xinhua said.

It cited an unnamed source as saying the company had suffered heavy losses from futures trading.

Chinese sugar futures spiked in February on expectations that a severe winter had hurt the crop, but then fell steadily until early October, when they defied a global market sell-off and rose sharply.

A sugar futures trader told Reuters that Zogood, which runs a number of sugar refineries in Guangdong and neighbouring Guangxi, had taken massive long positions when prices rose early this year and may have lost as much as 1 billion yuan.

($1=6.834 yuan) (Reporting by Jason Subler and Niu Shuping; Editing by David Fox)


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Last updated:Fri Oct 17 12:46:17 2008