Financier behind Earthlease bid for BT is murdered

Earthlease's £8BN offer for British Telecom's local loop has fallen into disarray after the Wall Street financier masterminding the project was found dead at his luxury Long Island home on the weekend, apparently the victim of a brutal murder.

Theodore Ammon was among the world's most renowned investment bankers, having raised some £35bn to fund acquisitions throughout his career. A former partner of the venture capital firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the 52-year-old gathered an elite band of financiers earlier this year to swoop on BT's 5,500 local exchanges. Sir Christopher Bland, BT's new chairman, snubbed his overtures.

Lieutenant John Gierasch, commander of the homicide squad at Suffolk County police said Mr Ammon had been beaten with a blunt object sometime between Saturday night and Monday morning. The alarm was raised after Mr Ammon, who was in the process of divorcing his wife Generosa, failed to arrange for his children to be collected from school.

"The people that routinely tend to these things at his behest had not been contacted by him to do these things," Lt Gierasch said.

A work colleague found Mr Ammon's body at 5pm on Monday in the bedroom of his multimillion-pound summer residence in East Hampton, a desirable suburb of Long Island, New York. The associate had flown in by helicopter from New York City after Mr Ammon missed a business meeting.

There were no obvious signs of forced entry, and nothing appeared to have been stolen from the house. Police said they had no motive or suspects for the murder, and had yet to make any arrests. "We're not discounting any possibilities with regard to motive," Lt Gierasch said.

The news sent shockwaves through the picturesque village, which contains huge houses belonging to showbusiness stars. Violent crime is almost unknown in the area, a longstanding hideaway for old-moneyed New Yorkers, which was immortalised in F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Mr Ammon achieved fame at KKR, where he worked between 1984 and 1992 and oversaw the world's largest leveraged buyout, the $31bn (£21bn) acquisition of RJR Nabisco in 1989. "We are shocked at the terrible news and wish to express our deep sorrow at the passing of our former partner," KKR said.

His most recent venture, Chancery Lane Capital, a Wall Street investment bank, teamed up with the US finance house, Babcock & Brown, to acquire BT's local loop through an outfit called Earthlease. He had persuaded the investment banks Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase and UBS Warburg to provide funding.

"He loved life, he loved his kids and he loved jazz," said a spokesman for Chancery Lane. "He will be sorely missed. Shocked doesn't begin to capture this. We were astonished by this."