Italian chocolate tycoon¹ Pietro Ferrero has died in an accident in South Africa, a company spokesman has said.

意大利巧克力巨头费列罗死于南非的一次意外事故。

Pietro Ferrero ran the firm with his brother, Giovanni
Mr Ferrero, 48, was on a business trip and died after falling off his bicycle, probably because of an ailment²（小病，不安） , the company said.

He was joint³ chief executive - along with his brother - of the Ferrero group, which owns Nutella and Kinder.

His father Michele, Italy's richest man, turned the company into a global giant of the confectionery（糖果店） industry.

Nutella

Mr Ferrero's grandfather, also Pietro, started the company in 1942 in the northern Italian town of Alba, where the firm is still based.

Because of wartime shortages, chocolate was difficult to obtain. The elder Pietro Ferrero hit upon a recipe which combined cocoa with locally abundant hazelnuts（榛子） .

That concoction⁴ - Nutella spread - became an international success.

In 2009, the company expressed interest in a bid for the UK confectionery group, Cadbury. However, it abandoned the plan and Cadbury was instead taken over by US-based Kraft Foods.

"Italy has lost a businessman who represented the best qualities of our economic history," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in a statement.

Mr Ferrero was also chairman of Ferrero SpA, the Italian branch of the firm.

The Ferrero company had an annual turnover⁵ of 6.6 billion euros ($9.4 billion) in its 2009-2010 financial year, the AFP news agency reports.

The business is still family-owned.