Wife’s fears for leading City banker ‘missing with two shotguns’

Posted by Fiona Harrold | One Comment

Today’s papers all report the disappearance of the multi-millionaire City banker. Hulbert Boumeester, 49, was depressed and had recently lost his job. He is described as having had a ‘glittering career’ with a salary in the region of £600,000, with homes in London and an estate in Scotland.

In 2007 he picked up a million euro bonus, so his ‘lavish lifestyle’ wasn’t overly threatened.
I don’t know about Mr Boumeester’s personal situation, but I have worked with numerous City bankers – some of them in similar situations. And I can’t help wondering about the power of peer pressure.

What was threatened – was it his status, his public standing? Was his ability to do the job in question? In other words, how much importance might someone in this situation attach to other’s opinion of him? If it’s enough to drive someone to depression and beyond, the answer is – probably a vast amount.

To depend on others for our identity; to lose our self-worth when we lose a job, or a contract or a relationship or anything else, is disastrous.

The question is: how do we maintain our sense of self when all around us may be changing and the familiar means of measuring our success taken away?

Here’s a clue from Marcus Aurelius,
‘If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.’

Let’s hope Hulbert Boumeester grasps this in time.