Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

[verdo]

http://rt.com/business/russell-inves...mist-dead-564/

Financial world shaken by 4 bankers' apparent suicides in a week

Published time: February 03, 2014 12:16Get short URL



Mike Dueker (Still from YouTube video/Russell Investments)




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Accident, Employment

The apparent suicide death of the chief economist of a US investment house brings the number of financial workers who have died allegedly by their own hand to four in the last week.
50-year-old Mike Dueker, who had worked for Russell Investment for five years, was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State, says AP.
Local police say he could have jumped over a fence and fallen 15 meters to his death, and are treating the case as a suicide.
Dueker was reported missing by friends on January 29, and police had been searching for him.
A Sheriff’s spokesman said investigators learned that he was having problems at work but did not elaborate.
Jennifer Tice, a company spokeswoman declined to comment, however said, that Dueker was in good standing at Russell.
“We were deeply saddened to learn today of the death,” Tice said in an e-mail on Friday. “He made a valuable contributions that helped our clients and many of his fellow associates.”
Dueker joined Russell Investment in 2008. He wrote for Market Outlook financial services publications, forecasting the business cycle and the target federal funds rate. He is the creator and developer of a business cycle index that forecast economic performance published monthly on the Russell website.
He was previously an assistant vice president and research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and is ranked in the top 5 percent of published economists.
Over the past two decades he wrote tens of research papers mostly on monetary policy, according to the bank’s website.
His most-cited paper was “Strengthening the case for the yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions,” published in 1997 while he was a researcher at the Federal Reserve.
“He was a valued colleague of mine during my entire tenure at the St. Louis Fed,” said William Poole, the bank's ex-president. “Everyone respected his professional skills and good sense.”
Dueker held an undergraduate degree in math from the University of Oregon, a master’s degree in economics from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Streak of bankers’ deaths

Dueker’s apparent suicide was the fourth among financial experts in a week.
A 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, William Broeksmit, was found dead on January 26 in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London.
The next day, January 27, Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, 51, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok. Police said he could have committed suicide. Mr. Slym was staying on a 22th floor with his wife, and was attending a board meeting in the Thai capital.
Another tragic incident occurred on January 28, when a 39-year-old Gabriel Magee, a JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of its European headquarters in London.
The offices of JP Morgan in the Canary Wharf district of London (Reuters/Simon Newman)

While creating fortunes, City and Wall Street jobs are notorious for extra-long working weeks and huge amounts of stress. In a move to ease the tension some of the world’s biggest lenders like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse have been telling junior staff to take more time off.
Some European countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have reduced the working week from 40 to 30 hours without damaging their economies, while in Germany an average worker puts in 35 hours a week and is the world’s fourth largest economy.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Taking the punchline from a well-known joke, "A good start."

[Fox]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

The S&P is only 5% off the peak. They must be pretty thinned skin these days to be jumping already. ;P

Or maybe they realize there's no bailouts any more? Now wouldn't that be a shocker.

[Fox]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Nice little article here talking about how there may be a Fraud connection
A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter – With Ties to Wall Street Investigations
although as there are a ton of investigations against many of the top banks, it's still not out of the realm of coincidence. And besides the three firms seem to be under three different investigations. If they were all involved in the same investigation I'd take a bit more notice.

Till something more comes to light I'd say it's just bankers dropping from windows.
No biggie ;P

[don]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

When I first read your post I thought it said there may be a Freud connection. Guess I slipped . . . .

[lektrode]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

...Guess I slipped . . . .

on this one, its not the slope that'll git ya

[don]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Suspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Now Under Investigation in London


By Pam Martens: February 9, 2014


JPMorgan's European Headquarters at 25 Bank Street, in the Canary Wharf Section of London

London Police have confirmed that an official investigation is underway into the death of a 39-year old JPMorgan Vice President whose body was found on the 9^th floor rooftop of a JPMorgan building in Canary Wharf two weeks ago.

The news reports at the time of the incident of Gabriel (Gabe) Magee’s “non suspicious” death by “suicide” resulting from his reported leap from the 33^rd level rooftop of JPMorgan’s European headquarters building in London have turned out to be every bit as reliable as CEO Jamie Dimon’s initial response to press reports on the London Whale trading scandal in 2012 as a “tempest in a teapot.”

An intense investigation is now underway into the details of exactly how Magee died and why his death was so quickly labeled “non suspicious.” An upcoming Coroner’s inquest will reveal the details of that investigation.

It’s becoming clear that when JPMorgan tells us “nothing to see here, move along,” that’s the precise time we need to bring in the blood hounds and law enforcement with the guts to get past this global behemoth’s army of lawyers who have a penchant for taking over investigations and producing their own milquetoast reports of what happened.

Jamie Dimon’s so-called “tempest in a teapot” in the London Whale matter morphed into $6.2 billion in bank depositor losses, $1 billion in fines to JPMorgan, 300 pages of scandalous details by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that called into question JPMorgan’s risk controls and the integrity of upper management, and, finally, resulted in criminal charges against two of the men involved. The criminal cases have yet to go to trial.

According to numerous sources close to the investigation of Gabriel Magee’s death, almost nothing thus far reported about his death has been accurate. This appears to stem from an initial poorly worded press release issued by the Metropolitan Police in London which may have been a result of bad communications between it and JPMorgan or something more deliberate on someone’s part.

The Metropolitan Police have provided me with their original press release. It reads:

“Police were called at approximately 08.02 hrs on Tuesday 28 January to reports of a man having fallen from a building at 25 Bank Street, E14 and landing on a ninth floor roof. London Ambulance Service and London Air Ambulance attended. The man was pronounced dead at the scene a short while later. The deceased is believed to be aged 39. We believe we know the identity of the deceased but await formal identification. Next of kin have been informed. No arrests have been made and the death is being treated as non-suspicious.”

That press release resulted in CNBC running with this headline: “Death Plunge at JP Morgan Tower Not Suspicious, Police Say.” Dozens of other media followed with similar reporting.

The Independent newspaper in London flatly stated that Magee “died after falling from the roof.” The London Evening Standard tweeted: “Bankers watch JP Morgan IT exec fall to his death from roof of London HQ,” which linked to their article which declared in its opening sentence that “A man plunged to his death from a Canary Wharf tower in front of thousands of horrified commuters today.”

At this moment in time, police have yet to produce a single witness who saw Magee jump from the rooftop of this building, let alone “thousands of horrified commuters.” (Exactly why would thousands of horrified commuters be standing in front of 25 Bank Street at 8:02 a.m. with their necks tilted up toward the roof? Magee did not land on the sidewalk; his body was found on a rooftop 9 floors above street level.) Both the Independent and London Evening Standard newspapers are majority owned by Alexander Lebedev, a Russian and former KGB agent.

No one in the media seemed to notice that Iain Dey, Deputy Business Editor of the Sunday Times in London, flatly disputed the notion that a plunge from the rooftop had been observed by anyone when he reported that: “Gabriel Magee’s body lay for several hours before it was found at 8am last Tuesday.”

The only facts in this case which are currently reliable are that fellow workers looking from their windows in the building noticed a body lying on the 9^th level rooftop, which juts out from the main 33-story building, at around 8:02 a.m. on Tuesday, January 28, and called the police. There is no concrete proof at this moment in time that Magee fell, jumped or was ever on the 33-story rooftop, which is a highly secured area of the building unobtainable by employees other than top security and maintenance personnel. According to design documents that have been publicly filed, the rooftop functions as a highly sophisticated cooling plant with large, bulky machinery taking up the majority of the space on the side of the building from which Magee would have had to jump in order to land on the 9^th level rooftop.

No solid evidence exists currently to suggest that the death was a suicide. In fact, there is a strong piece of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. Magee had emailed his girlfriend, Veronica, on the evening of January 27 to say that he was about to leave the office and would see her shortly. She received no further emails from him, suggesting that whatever happened to Magee happened shortly thereafter, not the next morning. According to multiple sources, Magee’s girlfriend reported his disappearance on the evening of January 27. The Metropolitan Police would provide me with no details on that investigation.

The JPMorgan building at 25 Bank Street is located in the borough of Tower Hamlets. According to drawings and plans submitted by JPMorgan to the borough after it purchased the building for £495 million in 2010, the 9^th floor roof is accessible “via the stair from level 8 within the existing Level 9 plant enclosure…” In other words, it would be just as reasonable to entertain the possibility that Magee suffered his physical injuries inside the building and his body was placed on the 9^th level rooftop via an internal staircase access sometime during the night of January 27.

The LinkedIn profile that Magee set up for himself online indicates that he was involved with “Technical architecture oversight for planning, development, and operation of systems for fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives.” As a key part of the computer technology group in London, Magee may have been involved in providing subpoenaed material for the London Whale investigation and the myriad other investigations that JPMorgan has been sanctioned and fined for over the last year. There are two serious open investigations into foreign exchange rigging and potential manipulation of commodities markets.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) lists the man known as the London Whale, Bruno Iksil, who is cooperating with criminal prosecutors, and the two traders who have been criminally charged with hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout, as having the same JPMorgan address, 25 Bank Street, as did Gabriel Magee.

Documents produced by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, however, show a 2012 address for JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office in London, supposedly where the London Whale trades were originating, as 100 Wood Street, 6^th Floor, London. If the London Whale traders were located at an address other than the European Headquarters for JPMorgan, it could have been to evade detection by regulators that the firm was using bank deposits in the United States, that carried FDIC insurance, to place high risk gambles in London in the derivatives market.

The Senate’s 300-page report noted that key traders involved in the London Whale matter, including Iksil, Martin-Artajo, and Grout, refused to submit to interviews by the Senate investigators. The Senate report notes that “their refusal to provide information to the Subcommittee meant that this Report had to be prepared without their direct input. The Subcommittee relied instead on their internal emails, recorded telephone conversations and instant messages, internal memoranda and presentations, and interview summaries prepared by the bank’s internal investigation, to reconstruct what happened.”

If Magee became aware that incriminating emails, instant messages, or video teleconferences were not turned over in their entirety to Senate investigators or Justice Department prosecutors, that might be reason enough for his untimely death. Yes, this is speculation. But it is along the lines that smart thinking investigators need to intensely explore to bring peace of mind and answers to Gabriel Magee’s loved ones and coworkers.

then there's the banker that committed suicide by nail gun - firing 7 - 8 shots into himself, head and body. Well . . . that sounds a lot more like an object lesson for others than the most painful suicide imaginable, short of self-immolation . . . .

[GRG55]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Same old, same old...

1982: 'God's banker' found hanged

The body of a top Italian banker has been found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.Known as God's banker for his links with the Vatican, 62-year-old Roberto Calvi was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano in Milan and a central figure in a complex web of international fraud and intrigue.

He had been missing for the last nine days before his body was discovered by a passer-by hanging from scaffolding on a riverside walk under the bridge.

Police are treating the death as suicide.

Jail sentence
Mr Calvi became chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, now Italy's largest private bank, in 1975 and built up a vast financial empire.

In 1978, a report by the Bank of Italy on Ambrosiano concluded that several billion lire had been illegally exported.

In May 1981, Mr Calvi was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to four years' imprisonment, but released pending an appeal. During his short spell in jail he attempted suicide.

Mr Calvi was due to appear in an Italian court next week to appeal against this conviction.

Later this month he was to be tried for alleged fraud involving property deals with Sicilian banker Michele Sindona, who is himself serving 25 years in America over the collapse of the Franklin National Bank in New York in 1974...

[rlskaggs2003]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Another one of God's bankers doing God's work, I suppose. Wonder if Lloyd owns a bridge somewhere?

[GRG55]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Another one of God's bankers doing God's work, I suppose. Wonder if Lloyd owns a bridge somewhere?

If Lloyd "owned" a bridge he would be trying to package a syndication and peddle it to his clients...

[don]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

If Lloyd "owned" a bridge he would be trying to package a syndication and peddle it to his clients...

not hard to image the prospectus . . .

(B)anker (B)acked (S)ecurities, tranch'd accordingly:

Death by Nail Gun AAA

Fall from Great Height BBB

Gunshot in the Mouth CCC

Drug Overdose Junk

We Welcome a Call from your Pension CFO on this exciting new BBS

[Master Shake]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

You guys are killing me!

[don]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

Yet another banker has committed suicide, with a JP Morgan forex trader leaping to his death from the top of the firm’s Chater House headquarters in Hong Kong.

Man pictured before his suicide (SCMP).

Over the past few weeks at least seven bankers have died under mysterious circumstances, including another JP Morgan senior manager who jumped off the top of a skyscraper in London last month.

Speculation is rife that the series of deaths are connected to some kind of looming financial crisis or a huge legal case targeting bankers for malfeasance, although no definite link has been established.

Eyewitnesses said that the man, who was in his 30′s, accessed the roof of the 30 story office tower and jumped, with police on the scene failing to talk him out of committing suicide. Chater House is JP Morgan’s main regional Asian office.

“According to several JP Morgan employees, the man was a forex trader with the company,” reports the South China Morning Post, adding that his name was Li Junjie. The bank itself refused to confirm that the man was an employee.

Junjie becomes the 7th banker to suddenly die in recent weeks. Questions as to whether the deaths are merely a coincidence or are linked to some as yet unknown factor continue to swirl.

[verdo]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

It's sometimes hard for me to believe these guys killed themselves because they saw a financial crisis on the horizon. If they had that info, they'd be preparing to go short. I think it's more likely some sort of internal scandal that would ruin them.

[Master Shake]

Re: Four banker suicides within a week - A sign, or mere coincidence?

It's sometimes hard for me to believe these guys killed themselves because they saw a financial crisis on the horizon. If they had that info, they'd be preparing to go short. I think it's more likely some sort of internal scandal that would ruin them.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/61200