–ABN Amro Ex-CEO Found Dead (ZeroHedge, April 6, 2014):
A mere two weeks since former JPMorgan banker, Kenneth Bellando jumped to his death, Bloomberg reports that the former CEO of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (and his wife and daughter) were found dead at their home after a possible “family tragedy.” This expands the dismal list of senior financial services executive deaths to 12 in the last few months. The 57-year-old Jan Peter Schmittmann, was reportedly discovered by his other daughter when she arrived home that morning. Police declined to comment on the cirumstances of his (and his wife and daughter’s) death. This is not the first C-level ABN Amro banker to be found dead. In 2009, former CFO Huibert Boumeester was discovered with (assumed self-inflicted) shotgun wounds.
Former ABN Amro Group NV Netherlands Chief Executive Officer Jan Peter Schmittmann, his wife and a daughter were found dead at their home today after a possible “family tragedy,” Dutch police said.
“The bodies of a father and mother and their daughter were found at the property” in the town of Laren, 32 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, Dutch police said in a statement on their website today. Leonie Bosselaar, a police spokeswoman, said in a telephone call with Bloomberg News that the deceased were Schmittmann and two family members.
The police received a call around 10:30 a.m. local time from a family acquaintance who said something may be wrong at the property, according to the statement. Bosselaar declined to comment further on what may have happened.
The Dutch newspaper AD reported, without citing anyone, that the family was discovered by Schmittmann’s second daughter when she arrived home this morning. She was scheduled to travel to India with her parents, where she had an internship lined up, the newspaper said.
Schmittmann, 57, joined ABN Amro in 1983 as assistant relationship manager and was named head of the lender’s Dutch unit in 2003. He stepped down from the Amsterdam-based bank in December 2008, after the company was nationalized earlier that year.
Sadly, given recent trends, the default assumption is that it is suicide until proven otherwise which is just as disturbing from a sociological perspective. (on the bright side, at least as far as we know, we was not involved in HFT) but further to that, this is not the first ABN Amro seniot executve to be found dead. In 2009, Schmittmann’s former CFO was found dead from shitgum wounds:
The former chief financial officer of Dutch bank ABN Amro has been found dead with shotgun wounds near his home in Surrey, the BBC has reported.
Huibert Gerard Boumeester was found dead yesterday, Sunday, with shotgun wounds, one week after being reported missing and “vulnerable”. Reports claim he was found with two shotguns which he had brought from his home, though Thames Valley Police say his death is currently being treated as “unexplained”.
Boumeester, 49, left his role as CFO encompassing responsibility for group-wide finance, risk management, investor relations, communications and strategic decision support in March 2008 citing “personal reasons” six months after ABN Amro was bought by Fortis, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander. The Dutch government now owns Fortis Bank and has taken direct ownership of its stake in ABN Amro. The British government owns most of RBS.
There are suggestions that Boumeester took his own life…
Schmittmann owned 2phase2 (apparently an asset management company) and was a co-founder of 5 Park Lane (what appears to be a private equity / management consultancy) according to his LinkedIn profile:
This brings the sad list of senior financial services exectives who have died in the last few months to 12:
1 – William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.
2 – Karl Slym, 51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.
3 – Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.
4 – Mike Dueker, 50-year-old chief economist of a US investment bank was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State.
5 – Richard Talley, the 57 year old founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.
6 – Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, however the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.
7 – Ryan Henry Crane, a 37 year old executive at JP Morgan died in an alleged suicide just a few weeks ago. No details have been released about his death aside from this small obituary announcement at the Stamford Daily Voice.
8 – Li Junjie, 33-year-old banker in Hong Kong jumped from the JP Morgan HQ in Hong Kong this week.
9 – James Stuart Jr, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO, found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say whatcaused the death
10 – Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, commited suicide by jumping in front of LIRR train
11 – Kenneth Bellando, 28, a trader at Levy Capital, formerly investment banking analyst at JPMorgan, jumped to his death from his 6th floor East Side apartment.
12 – Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, the former CEO of Dutch bank ABN Amro found dead at home near Amsterdam with wife and daughter.
This is a growing trend which is beginning to look like there is real trouble ahead in the money changer world.
Until Summer of 2010, every international financial transaction was completed in US dollars. That gave US currency a lot of power. Unfortunately, the greedy guts got into the system, and they raped and pillaged the entire system into an unrecognizable mass of debt.
Hugo Chavez, the president of VZ, saw what happened to the two countries that pushed hard for the world reserve currency be returned to gold……Iraq and Libya……and the US destroyed both nations.
Being the world reserve currency gave the greedy guts an opportunity to publish currency at will without any oversight whatsoever. They used to publish how much they printed, but during the Reagan years, they were able to stop reporting it.
As a result, we have a dreadful mess. The real crash started in 2000-2001, the US rebuilt it with a real estate bubble. When the bubble broke in 2007-08, the crooks were revealed, nothing was done to clean up the financial markets or punish any of the worst offenders. By 2010, the world was fed up with the US and their crooked financial system, and was looking for an alternative mode of trading with each other without involving the US dollar. Even worse, the international bankers, the IMF, ECB…..all followed the US example of printing their way out of trouble. As a result, there is far more currency than wealth to back it up.
Hugo Chavez headed up a small organization, the South American Trade Alliance. Their entire net worth averaged less than $500K a year, including Cuba.
In Summer of 2010, Chavez introduced the first electronic currency, the Sucre. It allowed member nations to trade with each other using their own currencies, leaving the dollar out. It worked so well that the rest of the world started following suit.
First, Russia and China established a similar trading system leaving the dollar out. They went on to recruit many African and South American nations. They also recruited Turkey, and Iran has been accepting all currencies for years, including gold.
Japan and India joined after the last round of insane sanctions against Iran. Later, in 2012, New Zealand and Australia dumped the dollar.
As it now stands, less than half the world uses the dollar. Electronic currencies translates the value of all currencies at the time of trade, making the need for a world reserve currency obsolete.
The global banking system is teetering on the edge of disaster. These greedy gut suicides are just the beginning.
There has been much debauchery and outright theft, and it is going to be exposed.
The world has changed, and all the old rules that provided a stable banking system are gone.