Tsai Wan-tsai, founder of Taiwanese financial services conglomerate, dies

Tsai Wan-tsai, the Taiwanese billionaire that founded family-controlled financial services conglomerate Fubon Group, has died at the age of 86.

Details of Tsai's death were not revealed in the one-sentence press release issued by Fubon Group on Sunday and the octogenarian was not known to be in poor health.

Tsai headed the family business for more than 50 years, transforming it from a property and casualty insurer into a service provider for financial, real estate and telecommunications sectors.

It is expected that his sons Daniel Tsai, chairman of Fubon Financial, and Richard Tsai, chairman of Taiwan Mobile, will take control of the conglomerate.

The Taipei-based company is now the second largest financial holding company by market capitalisation in the country and has $171.2 billion (€136 billion) assets under management.

Tsai was born into a poor farming family in northern Taiwan in 1929 (in Taiwan newborns' age at birth is one-year-old). He founded precursor company Cathay Insurance with his two brothers Tsai Wan-chun and Tsai Wan-lin in 1962.

Eventually the siblings split the business and Tsai went on to find extraordinary success, becoming the second wealthiest individual in the country, with Bloomberg estimating his fortune to be worth €6.3 billion.

His brothers made the Bloomberg Billionaires list for the first time in 2013.

Last year Fubon Group beat all Taiwanese financial holding companies in terms of profit, with a net income of $1.1 billion.

Tsai is survived by his wife and four children.