JPMorgan suicide is 3rd mysterious death in weeks
A 33-year-old JPMorgan finance pro leaped to his death Tuesday from the roof of the bank’s 30-story Hong Kong office, according to a bank spokesperson.
Li Junjie recently told a colleague he was under heavy work-related stress, a police investigator said.
Shortly after lunch on Tuesday, the JPM banker went to the roof of the downtown building. Police came to the building and tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of jumping, according to one local report.
The authorities said no suicide note was found.
“Our thoughts and sympathies go out to the family and friends at this time,” said a JPMorgan spokesperson in Hong Kong.
This suicide marks the third mysterious death of a JPMorgan banker in the last three weeks. So far, there is no other known link between any of the deaths.
As a result of the tragedies, JPM is reaching out to its 270,000 employees globally to inform them about the bank’s ongoing employee-assistance program to manage stress and depression, a bank spokesman said.
Gabriel Magee, 39, a vice president with the JPMorgan’s corporate and investment bank technology arm in the UK, jumped to his death from the roof of the bank’s 33-story Canary Wharf tower in London, according to reports.
Magee’s body was found about 8 a.m. on Jan. 28.
At JPM for slightly more than six years, according to his LinkedIn page, Magee was the lead architect for the bank’s fixed income/rates technology department. He worked previously at Intel.
A coroner’s inquest in ongoing in London.
On Feb. 3, Ryan Henry Crane, 37, a JPM executive director who worked in New York, was found dead inside his Stamford, Conn., home.
A cause of death in Crane’s case will not be determined until a toxicology report is complete, according to a spokesperson for the Stamford detectives division.
The report is expected within five weeks.
Crane, who grew up in New Jersey and graduated from the prestigious Delbarton School and then, in 1999, Harvard University, joined JPM in 2000, according to his LinkedIn page.
Crane last worked on JPM’s equities desk, buying stocks for the bank’s institutional customers.
“The clustering is striking,” said Dr. Christine Moutier of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, referring to the rash of banker suicides.
“In some high-stress careers, worrying about mental health is seen as a weakness and goes untreated,” Moutier added.
Two other bankers have also taken their lives outside of JPMorgan.
On Jan. 31, Mike Dueker — the chief economist at Russell Investments and former Federal Reserve bank economist — was found dead at the side of a road that leads to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was 50.
On Jan. 26, William Broeksmit, 58, a former senior risk manager at Deutsche Bank, was found hanging in a house in South Kensington, according to London police.
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