Suicide suspected in death of Swisscom CEO

Carsten Schloter, Swisscom AG's chief executive officer for seven years, was found dead at his home yesterday in what police said is a suspected suicide.

There's a "very high" probability Schloter, 49, killed himself, said Pierre-Andre Waeber, a spokesman for the police. The company said it's in mourning and won't disclose any further details out of consideration for his family. Switzerland's largest phone company named Urs Schaeppi, head of its Swiss business, interim CEO.

"A leading actor in the Swiss economy has been lost," Swiss Transport Minister Doris Leuthard said. "Carsten Schloter successfully positioned Swisscom in a highly competitive and rapidly changing market."

Schloter, a German citizen, joined Bern-based Swisscom in 2000 and became CEO in 2006. He helped lead the purchase of Fastweb, an Italian fixed-line provider, in 2007. The Swiss company paid about €4.6 billion (HK$47 billion) for the unit to make up for slowing growth in Switzerland.

The deal has failed to reverse Swisscom's fortune. The company had its first quarterly loss in more than a decade in the fourth quarter of 2011 due to a 1.2 billion Swiss franc (HK$9.9 billion) writedown for Fastweb.

In one of his last interviews, Schloter described himself as a victim of modern communication, always on the go and said it was all too easy to get lost in the stream of information.