By GEIR MOULSON
Associated Press
BERLIN (AP) - The family of a German billionaire has given up hope of finding him alive a week after he went missing in the Swiss Alps, his company said Friday.
Karl-Erivan Haub, the 58-year-old heir to the Tengelmann retail empire, was training for a ski mountaineering race when he disappeared under Switzerland's famous Matterhorn peak, located on the southern border with Italy.
He was last seen on Saturday morning as he headed up a mountain lift with skis and a daypack, and was reported missing to police the following morning after he failed to show up at his hotel in the Swiss resort of Zermatt.
Tengelmann said in a statement Friday on the family's behalf that, after days "in the extreme climate conditions of a glacier area, there is no longer any probability that Karl-Erivan Haub survived."
It said the search for Haub's body will continue and the company will pay all costs for that.
"This accident is a terrible tragedy both for the Haub family and the whole family company, and one that is incomprehensible for everybody," Tengelmann spokeswoman Sieglinde Schuchardt said.
The search for Haub on both sides of the Swiss-Italian border involved three helicopters, ground patrols and avalanche rescue teams, with up to 60 people at its peak.
It was complicated by bad weather and the fact that it wasn't clear exactly where Haub was going. Rescuers were combing a huge area under the Matterhorn and some suspected that he might have fallen into one of the region's many glacial crevasses.
Haub - who was born in Tacoma, Washington - and his brother Christian have led Tengelmann since 2000. The family's fortune is estimated at over 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion). Family patriarch Erivan Haub died in March at his home in Wyoming.
Tengelmann's main businesses are the hardware store Obi and clothing retailer KiK. It also has large stakes in the Netto supermarket chain and online retailer Zalando.
On Wednesday, rescue officials had said there was still a very slight hope for Haub if he had managed to keep himself warm in the cold Alpine conditions.
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(Roland Weihrauch/dpa via AP). FILE - The Sept. 7, 2015 file photo shows Karl-Erivan Haub, head of the Tengelmann group, during a press conference in Muelheim an der Ruhe, western Germany. Swiss rescuers said Friday, April 13, 2018 they’re resuming the...
(Dominic Steinmann/Keystone via AP). A helicopter of Air Zermatt is flying towards the Matterhorn mountain covered in fog, on Thursday, April 12, 2018, in Zermatt, Switzerland. The rescue team was unable to proceed the rescue operations for the missing...
(Dominic Steinmann/Keystone via AP). View from the gondola station "Trockener Steg", where the last mobile phone signal of the missing German businessman Karl-Erivan Haub, was detected, photographed on Thursday, April 12, 2018, in Zermatt, Switzerland....
(Dominic Steinmann/Keystone via AP). The heliport of Air Zermatt, the local air rescue, was unable to proceed the rescue operations today for the missing German businessman Karl-Erivan Haub, the 58-year-old heir to the Tengelmann retail empire, due to...
(Dominic Steinmann/Keystone via AP). A garage and stairs at the gondola station "Trockener Steg", where the last mobile phone signal of the missing German businessman Karl-Erivan Haub, was detected, pictured on Thursday, April 12, 2018, in Zermatt, Sw...