A 33-year-old man jumped to his death from the skyscraper roof of U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Asia headquarters on Tuesday, police said.
JP Morgan has confirmed that the man who jumped was an employee at the firm with the last name Li. He was a junior investment banker.
Li was certified dead in hospital after the fall at around 2 p.m., a police spokeswoman told Reuters. Police did not yet know the circumstances surrounding his death.
Horrified finance workers in neighbouring offices circulated pictures via social media of him standing above the company logo emblazoned on top of the Chater House building in central Hong Kong.
One Instagram user, kurtlinsfat, posted the following image, which he said was taken by a colleague on Tuesday:
“A sad and tragic incident occurred in Chater House, Hong Kong, today, which is currently being investigated by the police. Out of respect for those involved, we cannot yet comment further,” JPMorgan Chase & Co said in a statement.
Witnesses say that police tried to stop Li from jumping from the 30 story building, 10 floors of which are used by JP Morgan, around 2:00 or 3:00 pm, but to no avail.
The Chinese-language newspaper, Apple Daily, carried a photograph of Li lying in a pool of blood on the busy road, next to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The latest incident comes at a delicate time for the financial industry, when a spate of deaths have alarmed observers.
Last month, a 39-year-old JP Morgan vice president died after falling from the roof of the bank’s European headquarters in London.
Then on Feb. 3, Ryan Crane, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. employee who in a 14-year career at the New York-based bank rose to executive director of a unit that trades blocks of stocks for clients, died from unknown causes in his Stamford, Connecticut, home at 37 years old. The cause of death will be determined when a toxicology report is completed in about six weeks, a spokeswoman for the state’s chief medical examiner told Bloomberg.
The series of untimely deaths among finance workers and business leaders over the past three weeks extends beyond JPMorgan.
On Sunday, Jan. 26, London police found William Broeksmit, a 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, dead in his home after an apparent suicide.
Here’s a look at a few more recent incidents:
On Monday, Jan. 27, Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym died after falling from a hotel room in Bangkok in what police said could be possible suicide.
Slym, 51, had attended a board meeting of Tata Motors’ Thailand unit in the Thai capital and was staying with his wife in a room on the 22nd floor of the Shangri-La hotel. Hotel staff found his body on Sunday on the fourth floor, which juts out above lower floors.
On Wednesday, January 29, Russell Investments’ Chief Economist Mike Dueker was found dead in an apparent suicide. Police said it appears Dueker took his own life by jumping from a ramp near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, Wash., AP reported. According to Bloomberg, Dueker, 50, had been missing since Jan. 29, and friends and law enforcement had been searching for him.
The week before, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG died. The cause of death has not been made public.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the deaths among finance workers has shaken London and raised more concerns about stress levels of bankers.
It notes that last August, the finance chief at Zurich Insurance Group AG committed suicide and left a note blaming the company’s chairman for creating an unbearable work environment.
In August, a 21-year-old Bank of America intern died after reportedly working consecutive all-nighters at the bank’s London office.
Wall Street banks including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, subsequently told junior bankers to take more time off.
Compiled from Reuters, Bloomberg and Business Insider files
