Series of bizarre deaths in the financial world this week

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/31/chief-economists-apparent-suicide-is-the-latest-in-a-series-of-bizarre-deaths-in-the-financial-world-this-week/

by jasey • 12 years ago

32 23 12 years ago

business.financialpost.com

john2x• 12 years ago

Sounds very much like in a movie. Very eerie.

ethana• 12 years ago

The economic climate we are in now is eerily similar to the 2008 financial meltdown, but worse.

dmlorenzetti• 12 years ago

I don't know. They're casting a pretty wide net in their definition of "financial worker." Basically if you helped run a business, or worked at a bank, they were willing to count your death.

Without knowing the baseline population they're willing to consider in assembling their count, it's hard to say, but this might very easily be explained as a stochastic process that happens to be hitting a peak. It might even be the case that this sort of death rate happens all the time among the vast pool of "financial workers," but the Financial Post just happened to notice it this week.

tptacek5• 12 years ago

* Chief Economist at Russell, suicide, after problems at work

* A retired Deutche risk manager, suicide

* An MD at Tata Motors, suicide

* An IT manager at JPMC in London, apparent suicide

* An unnamed marketing professional at Swiss Re, cause unknown

This is more like numerology than a "series of deaths in the financial world". The "financial world" employs many hundreds of thousands of people. especially when generalized to include commercial, retail, and investment banks, asset management firms, the entire insurance industry, hedge funds, market data firms, and analysts. Also, apparently, the automotive industry.

Moreover, these are people with wildly different jobs and levels of seniority.

You can probably generate similar patterns every year, if you look carefully and track, say, IT executives and marketing managers alongside the Chief Economists. If you Google some of the names in this article, you'll see that the news coverage for them frequently does exactly that.

This seems pretty silly. What am I missing?

r0h1n2• 12 years ago

The only thing that stands out, for me, is suicide. For instance Tata Motors CEO Karl Slym committed suicide after an argument with his wife [0]. He was heading a $35 billion company, and from what I can see, was facing no fraud/bankruptcy/arrest either.

Makes you wonder what can turn someone at those levels so despondent enough to end it all?

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/1060...

tptacek5• 12 years ago

I don't understand what Tata Motors has to do with the financial industry.

logicchains• 12 years ago

Marriage is marriage, no matter how good one's job is.

sillysaurus2• 12 years ago

It seems like the propensity to commit suicide is probably a mental disorder, and everyone has the same probability of acquiring a mental disorder, whether they're rich or poor.

When flipping coins, it's rare, but not too rare, to see tails come up five times in a row. When you consider the statistics of suicide, it doesn't seem too far fetched to see a string of five suicides, even within a relatively short amount of time. It really is a shame, and I hope someday the causes will be better understood and made treatable.

jjoe• 12 years ago

Was just now researching this (procrast:on). Here's an incomplete list:

1) Tata's managing director Karl Slym

2) Swiss Re's Tim Dickenson communications director

3) Russell Investments’ chief economist Mike Dueker

4) Deutsche Bank's William Broeksmit to become chief risk officer (didn't materialize)

5) Zurich Insurance Group's finance chief Pierre Wauthier

joe_the_user• 12 years ago

What would be useful would be a tool to determine how really unusual is some series of events X. Obviously, you'd have to keep in mind that every day some number of "highly unlikely" events occurs [1].

Not to dismiss this series of bizarre death but rather, just feeling frustrated that I can say neither "Woah, something's going on" nor "nothing to see here folks, move along".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

tptacek5• 12 years ago

Suicide incidence per 100,000 people in the US is ~21 people annually. JPMC and Citigroup alone employe over 500,000 people. This story cites something like 6 deaths, in wildly different roles, including that of a retiree.

bertil4• 12 years ago

Since 2007, most bankers have described their situation as significantly more worrying and stressful. I’m estimating the number of senior executives in that industry at 50,000 people. Suicide rate for stressed 50-somethings is around 15 per 100,000. That means on average one every three weeks.

That would make a week with seven deaths seem suspicious, but let's consider the Bernouilli distribution, considering there has been roughly 700 weeks since 2007: ( (1-( 1-(15/100000/52))^50000 * (15/100000/52))^7 ) ^700 )

Yeah, that's unlikely.

tptacek5• 12 years ago

These aren't all bankers, they aren't all senior executives, they aren't all 50, the entire financial industry employs over 1,000,000 people, and you've understated the suicide rate (you may only be counting the male stat).

The article also doesn't count seven financial industry suicides in a week. It counts 3 (in that week, and in the [insanely broad] finance industry), and an auto executive.

bertil4• 12 years ago

With your numbers, it indeed become reasonably likely - thanks for that. I'm always confused by how titles can be inflated in the financial services.

My point was more: when it comes to conspiracy, stay away from story-telling, and do the math. That forces you to focus on assumption, such as the actual size for the group considered.

sneak• 12 years ago

If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything...

confluence• 12 years ago

More like a bunch of people died in a bunch of different jobs this week, so lets make some faulty correlations on a small sample size.

Series of bizarre deaths in the financial world this week

Related Stories