Rockefeller CEO James S McDonald: the latest financial crisis suicide?

The financial advisor to some of America's wealthiest families has been found dead in what appears to be a case of suicide. He is James S McDonald, 56, chief executive and president of the New York-based investment advisory firm Rockefeller & Co.

He was discovered on Sunday afternoon in his car behind a car dealership in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, about 50 miles south of Boston. McDonald died from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
 
Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the local district attorney's office, said McDonald left no note but had "made a phone call to his wife earlier in the day". A longtime friend of McDonald's, Barclay McFadden III, told local reporters that McDonald "took his own life" but would make no further comment. The death is still under investigation.
 
A Harvard graduate, McDonald had headed Rockefeller & Co for more than eight years. The company was founded more than 100 years ago by oil tycoon John D Rockefeller to manage his family money, and McDonald had built it into a flourishing wealth manager with around £28 billion in client assets. He had homes in New York and Boston. "He was a highly regarded figure here," said Tim Vaill, chief executive officer of Boston Private Financial Holdings.

It remains unclear whether his death is connected to his business affairs. People who knew him professionally have told reporters that they were shocked by his death, and had no knowledge of any specific problems at Rockefeller & Co that might have prompted his suicide.

If it was the world banking crisis that led him to shoot himself, then he will be the latest in a line of high-profile victims. The New York-based French aristocrat Thierry de la Villehuchet, 65, slit his wrists in December after supposedly losing more than $1.4 billion in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and Adolf Merckle (pictured), the 74-year-old German industrialist, threw himself under a train in January after losing as much as €500 million in the Volkswagen share-selling scandal.

In April, David Kellermann, the 41-year-old acting chief financial officer of the troubled US mortgage lender Freddie Mac, hanged himself at his suburban Washington home. ·