London, Nov. 9: Angad Paul, the youngest son of Caparo chairman and peer Swraj Paul, plunged to his death from the family's eight-storey apartment block in London yesterday.

Angad, 45, who was chief executive officer of Caparo and one of Britain's most dynamic young business leaders, leaves behind wife Michelle and two young children. Sixteen companies from the Caparo group in the UK had recently been taken into administration.

Under the arrangement, an administrator - in this case PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - will manage the companies, protect them from creditors and possibly try to find a buyer able to carry on with the business. The step is not as bad as "liquidation" - when a company's assets are torn off and sold.

Caparo's 2014 turnover had dipped 1.3 per cent to £368 million and the group ended with an operating loss of £700,000. Its UK operations suffered a £2.5-million operating loss in the year, reversing the £1.7-million profit made the previous year.

Angad's sudden death has devastated his family and friends. Many will see it as Britain's steel industry, beset by the dumping of cheap Chinese imports, claiming yet another victim.

One tweet expressed condolences for the family and then summed up: "The other tragedy behind this is of course that of the steel industry, not just that of the employees but our capacity.... remind me, where are we buying the cheap steel from?"

But cheap Chinese steel is not the only problem. In any case, introducing import control is anathema to the British government. The Caparo group makes steel, automotive and engineering products, which have become increasingly hard to export to Europe as the pound sterling has strengthened against the euro.

Some 450 redundancies were announced last month at Caparo in what trade unions described as a "devastating" blow to the British steel industry, while the future of another 1,200 jobs is uncertain.

It will be up to the coroner formally to reveal the cause of Angad's death but the initial statement from London police said officers had been called to an address in Marylebone in central London at 11am yesterday.

"London ambulance service and London's air ambulance both attended and the man, believed to be in his mid-40s, was pronounced dead at the scene," it said. "Enquiries into the circumstances of the incident continue but it is being treated as non-suspicious at this stage."

The apartment where chief minister Mamata Banerjee had called on Swraj in July is located in the same block.

Angad's father-in-law, Jeffery Bonn, said the family had been torn apart by the news of the death.

The 72-year-old, who lives in Kensal Rise, north London, told the London Evening Standard: "We are all in pieces. We are very much in shock; nothing can be said. He was a very good, very generous and very kind man. He was dearly loved and will be so sadly missed."

Angad was born in London on June 6, 1970, and was educated, like his elder twin brothers Ambar and Akash, at Jawaharlal Nehru's and Winston Churchill's old school, Harrow.

He then attended Swraj's alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston where he received a BSc in economics. But he also studied media arts and sciences, an interest he pursued successfully as producer and executive producer of several films, including the immensely successful Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.

He was also behind the Caparo T1, which was the world's fastest supercar when it was launched in 2006. It was developed by former McLaren Formula One engineers.

Angad teamed up with Stella McCartney's husband Alasdhair Willis to form the upmarket furniture brand Established & Sons.

Swraj, 84, and his wife Aruna settled in Britain in the 1960s after losing their daughter, Ambika, to leukaemia. Swraj had always thought that Angad was the right person to take the dynasty forward.

Angad joined Caparo in 1992 and was appointed its chief executive officer in 2003 when he was only 33.

When Angad and Michelle, a lawyer, were married in 2004, the London reception was held in the grand surroundings of a government-run palace, Lancaster House, where the guests included Gordon Brown, soon to be the Prime Minister of Britain.

In an interview with The Telegraph two years ago, Angad was asked: "What is the single most important thing you have learnt from your dad?"

His reply: "Just to not give up."

He had heard of the battles Swraj had fought in the 1980s in India over acquisition of DCM (Delhi Cloth Mills) and Escorts, the engineering group. Such tales had fired up the young Angad who wanted to right the wrongs he felt had been done to his father.

"The reason why I built it (Caparo) in India is actually because I was p....d off by the way my father was treated in the eighties," Angad had told this newspaper. "I had to go there and watch the chattering classes say, 'Swraj Paul can't build a business in India.' I decided I was going to do it and do it clean and do it properly."

He added: "I don't need acceptance. I don't care. Why do people care about being accepted? I have always been slightly off the wall in terms of what the chattering classes say.... I don't care. I just get on with doing my work..."

He was very much his father's son but much more direct in expressing his opinions. "When DCM happened I was in my teens -- literally gone into my teens. It started in 1983, so I was 13," he recalled.

"And the stupidest, the worst part of Indians as a race and it's not only Indians -- there are other races like this -- but Indians have this crazy notion that somehow they are better off by the person closest to them being worse off," he said.

"People always want to bring people down -- and maybe that's a hangover because we have a bit of that in Britain but the Brits, at least, everywhere else will stand up for each other like crazy."

Angad, asked whether the responsibility of running such a global empire sat lightly on his shoulders, did not seem the least bit cowed.

"My father built a business doing certain things to a point -- I have been doing it for 10 years," he responded.

"I was charged with it 10 years ago and I built the business to something different. My father gave me a responsibility 10 years ago and I have worked to that responsibility."

He went on: "We have got a company three times larger than the one I inherited which earns strong margins and which has expanded internationally. That's all that matters."