Steel boss depressed at firm's collapse jumped to death from penthouse
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Version 0 of 1. A steel company boss jumped to his death from the balcony of his penthouse apartment in central London after becoming overcome with depression following the collapse of his business. Angad Paul, 45, killed himself as his children played in their bedroom, believing he was to blame for the downfall of his family business, an inquest heard. The company, Caparo, had been enduring large-scale job cuts as administrators tried to salvage it. The firm announced 450 redundancies in October 2015 as steel prices collapsed, a month before Paul’s death. He was the son of Lord Paul, who founded the business in 1968 with a £5,000 loan and helped it grow into a multibillion-pound enterprise. He had run the Caparo Industries subsidiary since taking over from his father in 1996. Westminster coroner’s court heard that Paul had told his colleague Denis Krupnov that “although he was CEO … he had no real control of the company affairs”. He added that his father, who attended the inquest, took all the decisions. Paul became very depressed when the company was put into administration and, although he believed it was the wrong decision, there was nothing he could do, the court heard. He was concerned about how he was going to pay the mortgage and, feeling “absolutely powerless”, believed people would think he was responsible for the failure of the company. Paul’s wife Michelle told the inquest he had had a history of depression, but that he had never expressed suicidal thoughts to her. She said that in the months before his death, he had expressed a wish to come off antidepressants, which he had been taking since 1999. He looked into more holistic approaches to tackle his condition and attended a retreat in the Amazon in September last year. Michelle Paul said: “He said the trip was not good. The tribe he loved and stayed with before had become commercialised and were losing their identity.” “He came out looking scruffy and crumpled, and not like him. And he was very distracted and for the first time since I was 17, he let me carry a bag. He said ‘Mich, it has all gone wrong, what are we going to do?’ “He was the happiest person I ever knew. I had no idea that he had suicidal thoughts.” The court heard that Paul had sold his four sports cars and begun wearing his cheapest watch, saying he did not “deserve nice things” when so many of his workers were going to lose their jobs. He admitted himself to the Capio Nightingale hospital, from where he continued to work on his business, on 4 October, and left 12 days later after he was deemed not to be at active risk of suicide. He returned to work, but was devastated when a news story broke about there being a loss of hundreds of jobs at the company. On 8 November, Paul told his wife he wanted to be alone, and she told him that was not going to happen. Paul’s father, who lived in the same building, called to say that he would be coming upstairs shortly to see his son. Later that morning Michelle Paul left the flat in Portland Place to get a cup of coffee, leaving her husband at home with their two children. When she returned, neither she nor her father-in-law could find Paul. “I had assumed that he was in the bedroom. I was in my office,” she said. She later noticed the kitchen door to the balcony was open, and when she looked over the edge she saw her husband lying on the first-floor flat roof. She told the court she had explained to their children that their father had suffered a “heart attack to the brain”. The assistant coroner Shirley Radcliffe ruled that Paul had killed himself while “the balance of his mind was disturbed”. She said: “I shall record that Angad Paul has died as a result of severe head injuries, and on 8 November 2015 he jumped from the balcony of his home address. He had been suffering from severe agitated depression.” |