The communications director of troubled Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) has died in an apparent suicide.

David Rossi’s body was found outside the lender’s headquarters in Siena at about 9 p.m. yesterday and police are conducting an investigation, Romano Colucci, an assistant to Prosecutor Nicola Marini, said by telephone today.

Corriere Della Sera reported Rossi, 51, committed suicide, without saying where it got the information.

“Rossi’s death is a terrible tragedy,” the bank said in a statement posted on its Facebook page. “This tragic event imposes above all respect for the person, for the mourning of the family and all of us.”

Andrea Greco, a reporter for Italian newspaper La Repubblica who knew Mr Rossi, said: “He was a very serious person, under pressure over a judicial probe which had touched on him through a recent police search, even if he was not under investigation.”

By UP