Gustavo Arnal

Bed Bath & Beyond CFO Jumps From 18th Floor of “Jenga Tower” After Disastrous Financial Report

Update:

We may now know the motive for suicide. According to Fox Business:

The executive vice president and chief financial officer of Bed Bath & Beyond who plunged to his death from the 18th floor of a New York City skyscraper on Friday was the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging that he and majority shareholder, GameStop Chairman Ryan Cohen, had artificially inflated the company’s value in a “pump and dump” scheme.

Gustavo Arnal, 52, and Cohen, are listed as defendants in the class-action lawsuit filed last month in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Original Article:

The Chief Financial Officer for retailer Bed Bath & Beyond has apparently committed suicide following a financial report that included shuttering stores and laying off a massive number of people.

Gustavo Arnal, 52, was the Chief Financial Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond. According to The Daily Mail:

  • Calls regarding the jump at 56 Leonard Street near Church Street came in at around 12:30 pm on Friday, according to a spokeswoman for the NYPD 
  • The city’s EMS officials responded to the incident and were seen carrying the man’s body off in a black body bag at the base of the famous Manhattan tower
  • The man was pronounced dead before leaving the scene 
  • He was identified as  Gustavo Arnal, Chief Financial Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, early Sunday morning 
  • Bed Bath & Beyond announced just days earlier that it would have to lay off 20% of its staff and close 150 stores nationwide as high inflation and a sagging economy hammer large US companies
  • Arnal took on the role of CFO in 2020, having previously worked as an executive at several major companies including Avon, Walgreens, and Procter & Gamble

He reportedly sold over 42,000 shares in the company, oft-identified as a ‘meme stock’, for $1 million just over two weeks ago, according to MarketBeat.com. At the time, he still owned 267,896 shares in the company, valued at just under $6.5million.

Everything about this story seems strange. We will be monitoring closely for further developments.

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