BILLIONAIRE DISAPPEARS WHILE SKIING

BERLIN Swiss rescue teams held out hope Wednesday that there was still a chance of finding a German billionaire alive even though he has been missing in the Alps for days, but admitted the likelihood of his survival was diminishing rapidly.

Karl-Erivan Haub, the 58-year-old heir to the Tengelmann retail empire, was training for a ski mountaineering race when he disappeared on Switzerland’s famous Matterhorn peak, located on its southern border with Italy.

Haub was skiing on his own in an area with glaciers and could have fallen into a crevasse, said Bruno Jelk, an experienced mountain rescue expert based in Zermatt.

Christian Haub said he was hopeful his brother would be found but prepared for bad news. He said Tengelmann, which the brothers have led since 2000, would continue to run “smoothly and orderly.”