A missing private equity firm executive has been found dead at the side of a highway on January 30, reported Bloomberg. According to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, Russell Investments chief economist Mike Dueker was found near a highway leading to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state.
Pierce County Detective Ed Troyer said yesterday that Dueker may have leaped over a 4-foot (1.2-meter) fence, before dropping into an embankment measuring up to 50 foot deep.
Together with law enforcement, concerned friends and family has been looking for Dueker ever since he was reported missing on January 29, Bloomberg said. Troyer said that their investigation had led them to believe that Dueker was having problems at work, but did not provide any further details. When Bloomberg asked Russell Investments about Troyer's statement, company spokeswoman Jennifer Tice said Dueker was in good standing at the company. She, however, refused to comment about the police's statement.
In an email, Tice wrote, "We were deeply saddened to learn today of the death. He made valuable contributions that helped our clients and many of his fellow associates."
Russell is a subsidiary of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. The company has over $246 billion of assets under management and calculates benchmark indexes like the Russell 3000, for example.
Dueker's five-year tenure at Russell saw him developed a business-cycle index that provides forecasts on economic performance, Bloomberg said. He also worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis as an assistant vice president and research economist. His latest work, noted Bloomberg, was a paper published in 1997 titled "Strengthening the case for the yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions." The paper was published by the local reserve bank while Dueker was working there as a researcher at that time, the news agency added.
Dueker is also an acclaimed economist in the field, ranking him among the top 5% of economists based on the number of his published works.
Former Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis president William Poole said about Dueker's untimely departure, "He was a valued colleague of mine during my entire tenure at the St. Louis Fed. Everyone respected his professional skills and good sense."
