World’s Richest Candy Maker And Nutella Founder Died on Valentine’s Day

World’s Richest Candy Maker and Nutella Founder Died on Valentine’s Day

Michele Ferrero, Italy's richest man who brought Nutella spread, Tic Tac mints and namesake Ferrero Rocher chocolates to the world, died Saturday after a long illness at the age of 89.

The richest man in Italy and among the richest in the world, Mr. Ferrero built closely held Italian chocolate maker Ferrero SpA into a company now valued at about $30 billion, according to some analysts’ recent estimates. The family has a net worth of $26.5 billion, according to Forbes’ list of richest people.

With revenue of €8.4 billion ($9.56 billion) in 2014, Ferrero has been courted by giant competitors, such as Nestlé SA and Mars Inc., which in recent years repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to get their hands on it.

He was the mind behind some of Ferrero’s most successful confectionery products, starting in 1964 with Nutella—which is to many European children what peanut butter is to America. He later added Tic Tacs in 1969, with their distinct plastic box; Kinder Sorpresa chocolate eggs in 1974 (which because of their toy inside, a potential choking hazard, can’t be sold in the U.S.); and Ferrero Rocher in 1982.

Born in 1925, Mr. Ferrero inherited the family business from his father, Pietro Ferrero, who after World War II, had experimented with new ingredients for sweets that could substitute for chocolate because cocoa was in short supply. He settled on pasta gianduja: a butter-like paste that combined hazelnuts with cocoa butter and vegetable oil. The recipe, which formed the basis of what later became known as Nutella, was kept a family secret.

It was Michele Ferrero’s vision to expand internationally. In the 1950s, he opened production plants and offices in Europe. He expanded to the rest of the world starting from the 1970s. All the while the company shunned acquisitions, and instead broke into foreign markets by introducing new products catered to local tastes.

Ferrero is the world’s fourth-biggest chocolate confectionery company, with 8% of the global chocolate market, compared with No. 3 Nestlé, which has 12%, according to consumer research group Euromonitor’s data dated 2013.

Despite the global ambitions, Michele Ferrero was known as a family man, intensely private and distant from the country’s business world. He rarely spoke to media during his life and was regularly absent from the business community’s gatherings. Moreover, the family has always insisted Ferrero SpA was to be kept in family hands and never accepted any deals.

Michele Ferrero led the company from 1949 until the 1990s, when he handed over the role of chief executives to his two sons, Giovanni and Pietro.

In 2009, facing pressure to expand, Pietro Ferrero challenged his father’s deal-averse approach by pushing the company to bid for U.K. candy maker Cadbury PLC, according to people familiar with the matter. The younger Mr. Ferrero was ultimately unable to overcome his family’s skepticism about a potential deal. Ferrero dropped out of the bidding, and Cadbury ended up in the hands of Kraft Foods Inc.

Giovanni Ferrero became sole chief executive in 2011 after brother Pietro died of cardiac arrest while cycling. In a 2013 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Giovanni Ferrero said he plans to continue to increase sales by strengthening the business in markets such as the U.S. and Asia.

Michele Ferrero died in Monte Carlo, where he lived. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday morning in Alba, a small town in the north of Italy where Ferrero’s main plant is based.