Stéphane Eimer, president of the powerful medical analysis laboratory company Biogroup, was found dead in Paris at the age of 52, AFP learned Thursday from the laboratory and from a judicial source.
An investigation into the causes of death has been opened, said the Paris prosecutor's office.
According to a source familiar with the matter, he was found dead on Wednesday at the foot of a Parisian hotel and it would be a suicide.
Read alsoBiogroupe wants to take advantage of the French appetite for plants
Biogroup, which had announced in the morning the death of Stéphane Eimer, had mentioned to AFP a
"brutal and sudden"
death .
Stéphane Eimer, a doctor of pharmacy, founded Biogroup in 1998, which presents itself as one of the leaders in medical biology analyzes in France.
A doctor of pharmacy, 167th fortune of France
In 2021, the magazine Challenges ranked Stéphane Eimer in 167th place among the greatest fortunes in France.
Biogroup has some 11,000 employees, spread over more than 1,500 laboratories in France, Belgium, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
Led by Stéphane Eimer, the group was initially concentrated in the North-East of France and developed in 2015 with the acquisition of the Biolam-LCD network in Ile-de-France.
It then multiplied acquisitions in the South, the Center, in Rhône-Alpes and in the West, before going international from 2020, with in particular the takeover of the CMA-Medina network in Belgium.
The Covid-19 crisis had contributed to increasing its turnover.
