* 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.
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?
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.
The studies I've seen suggest that the poor are more likely to suffer from mental disorders than the rich. http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=21121... estimates that 20-54 year olds making <$20,000 per year are 1.8x more likely to have a mood disorder and 3.7x more likely to attempt suicide than those making >$70,000/year. There is evidence for a relationship in the longitudinal analysis as well, so it's not necessarily a matter of upbringing.
US car companies seem to operate under this model, but in the rest of the world the financing income is seen as a useful supplement to income from selling cars.
For example, Tata's increase in profitability last year is attributed to increases sales of Jaguar and Landrover cars[1], not profits from financial services.
I know it is the case for both French car companies and Volvo -- meaning the influence of financiers over the company decisions is stronger than any engineer: CEO track, risk assessement is about liability not engineering excellence. Most Japanese and Korean companies are better seen as a conglomerates (zaibatsu). I've heard similar stories for US companies, but I don't personally know anyone working for them. It is indeed not the case for German brands, were the engineering excellence still matters. Tata is a large group that works far beyond cars: they handle personal finance, pharmaceuticals, etc. Your link is specifically about the car company, Tata Motors.
The OP isn't talking about profit vs loss financial management, they are referring to the practice of US manufactures of offering finance packages to purchase a car.
These finance packages are quite lucrative in the US market, and for many US manufacturers are more profitable than manufacturing.
(The suicide referred to was an executive of Tata Motors)
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".
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.
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 )
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.
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.
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.
* 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?