Barry's Blog

On a mild Thursday morning in late September, Kirk Stephenson, a London investment-fund executive, ate breakfast with his wife and eight-year-old son, then drove to a train station about 30 miles from his Chelsea home. As an express train approached, Mr. Stephenson stepped onto the tracks, according to British Transport Police. The driver applied emergency brakes but couldn't stop in time. Mr. Stephenson, 47 years old, died at the scene. What was ailing this man who seemed to have it all? 

So begins The Wall Street Journal article from the middle of November about Kirk Stephenson's suicide. He left no suicide note, but many friends and associates in London, the U.S., and his native New Zealand suggest that he was a casualty of the global financial crisis, as pressures mounted from the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.

Mr. Stephenson was the chief operating officer of Olivant Ltd., an investment firm he co-founded with Luqman Arnold, a former UBS AG President, in 2006 (They had named the firm after an ivory battle horn that in medieval legend kills birds by the shrill sound of its blast). When UBS posted significant losses in mortgage securities earlier this year, Olivant was accumulating a 2:8% stake and attempting to help turn around the Swiss banking giant. Those UBS shares, valued at around $1 billion, were put into a Lehman account with a proviso that allowed Lehman to use the assets as collateral to borrow money. And because of this so-called "rehypothecation agreement," Olivant was unable to locate the UBS stock when Lehman filed for bankruptcy. Olivant may never recover those assets. And when Lehman plunged into bankruptcy, its main European unit in essence froze the assets of thousands of clients, and $65 billion of cash and securities remain entangled in the unit's prime-brokerage arm.

As Olivant's chief operating officer, Stephenson had approved the Lehman contract, and had left the firm and was negotiating a separation agreement. Several friends offered that Stephenson had recently told them that he was under enormous pressure at work. Still, his death was a tremendous shock to a wide circle of friends, not only in business, but also art and politics. Only a few weeks before Lehman's bankruptcy, Stephenson and his wife had gone to Verona, Italy, to see the opera with a friend who heads a London hedge fund. On Sunday, September 21st, Stephenson had attended his regular weekly tennis game. His playing partner said he didn't talk about specific problems, but made it clear that "things weren't easy" at work. His game was off and his spirits subdued. "He seemed down, pale, and had other things on his mind," Mr. Maher said.

Clearly, the pressure had become too great. Stephenson was known to be fastidious about everything, from his neat handwriting to his ironed handkerchiefs. Mr. Maher, his tennis partner recalled him organizing the bills in his wallet so they faced the same way and were ordered in size. "Control was a very important feature for him," Mr. Maher offered. And clearly, the economic meltdown, and his financial demise, were too much for him to handle.

Four days later, Mr. Stephenson had taken his own life. His wife, financial journalist Karina Robinson, called her husband a "life enhancer" who liked opera and shared a passion for board games and tennis with his son. "He will be sorely missed," she wrote. In a tribute on the online memorial, his son Lucas wrote: "Dada, I miss you..."

What is it that could drive a man to leave behind so much? Just wondering...