Freddie Mac: David Kellermann Commits Suicide | 04/22/2009 7:50 am
Freddie Mac CFO David Kellermann Commits Suicide
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Freddie Mac’s acting chief financial officer, David Kellermann, committed suicide either late last night or early this morning, WTOP reports. He has worked for Freddie Mac for more than 16 years, taking over as CFO last September 2008.
Fairfax County, VA, police spokeswoman Mary Anne Jennings says Kellermann, 41, was found at his Reston, VA, home Wednesday morning after the family called around five o’clock AM ET.
"We’re not to give you details of the condition of the body, except to say it was an apparent suicide," Jennings told WTOP.
ABC News later reported that Kellermann was found hanging from his basement ceiling.
As acting CFO, Kellermann is responsible for the company’s financial controls, financial reporting, tax, capital oversight, and compliance with federal regulations. He also oversees the company’s annual budgeting and financial planning processes. He reports directly to CEO David M. Moffett. He previously served as Freddie Mac’s senior vice president, corporate controller and principal accounting officer.
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16 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
Wonder how all of those people — Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Maxine Waters feel about this. They were so sure Freddie was "doing just fine" — this poor man knew things weren’t "doing just fine". Maybe he couldn’t handle being questioned about his part in this whole fiasco! Possibly he knew that the "buck stopped with him". Possibly there was some "cooking the books". Possibly he couldn’t stand the thought of sitting before a commission or being prosecuted. All of those things could have caused this tragedy. Or, perhaps his life was threatened by a bunch of thugs.
Sometimes there is never any answer. It’s a horrible experience for his family. God be with them.
This is an incredibly sad story.
Life has many chapters, as somebody wrote a day or so ago on the thread about a young woman who committed suicide after the cancellation of her television show. As Belinda notes above, it’s particularly sad if this man committed suicide over money.
I hope his family finds the strength to sustain them through the days and months ahead, while the media no doubt infringes on their every privacy in order to prove one point or another about whatever political agenda they have. To this family, it’s not about politics anymore, it’s about the pain and sorrow they will have to go through in order to move on with their lives.
My heart and prayers are with them.
He made more money in a week than I earn in a year, lived in a mansion that I could never hope to even be invited in to admire, received an education that my family, nor I could ever afford and then killed himself (supposedly) for whatever reason. On a human level, of course it’s sad but come on, he chose to do it. Why should I care and why is this news? I lost half of my 401K and my best friend lost her job! Cry me a river.
I think it is TERRIBLE that Wow used a ‘Crime’ banner in this story….instead of the 41 year old man’s photo…and thereby putting a human face on a tragedy that happens MORE often in this country than murder. The husband and father and reportedly all around nice guy had been promoted into his position after higher-ups were let go…..and was working so hard that neighbors had noticed he’d lost weight, and human resources told him the day before that he needed to take a break.
"Freddie Mac’s acting chief financial officer had met with the mortgage giant’s human resources office and had been making plans to take time off only a day before authorities found him dead in an apparent suicide, a person close to the company said Thursday.
"A human resources official met with David Kellermann on Tuesday and told him he needed a break because he had been working hard, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the individual wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"Kellermann, 41, of Vienna, was found dead Wednesday in the basement of his home. A law enforcement official also speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that Kellermann hanged himself. He asked not to be identified because the investigation was ongoing.
"Kellermann worked for the company for 16 years and was promoted last September when the government seized the mortgage company and ousted its top two executives. He oversaw a staff of about 500 at Freddie Mac’s McLean headquarters and was working on the company’s first-quarter financial report, due by the end of May.
"Co-workers were not the only ones who had noticed the strain placed on Kellermann by his job duties. Several neighbors said Kellermann had lost weight in recent months, and some had even advised him to quit, but Kellermann responded that he wanted to help the company through its difficulties.
"The meeting with the human resources office was first reported Thursday on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site."
Freddie Mac, which owns or guarantees about 13 million mortgages, has been criticized for financing risky loans that fueled the real estate bubble and are now defaulting at a record pace. The company lost more than $50 billion last year, and the Treasury Department has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat. Last month, David Moffett, the government-appointed chief executive, resigned in frustration over strict oversight.
Medical examiners have completed Kellermann’s autopsy but say a final determination on his cause of death could be weeks away."
As far as he lived in a mansion etc and for some reason that negates the tragedy….today is the 9-month anniversary of my brother’s suicide. He worked VERY hard to create a multi-million dollar business that he ran out of his lakefront home [worth much more than this man’s home, and paid for] because he wanted to be home with his wife, dog, and two sons that he sent to $40K a year college, and to take his boys sailing every night. They lived there in the nicest town in Oregon for 20 years.
My brother, like this man, was greatly respected by everyone who knew him. He was a completely decent, honest, witty man who never did a thing wrong in his life, and was always very careful with money, not flashy a bit. When the ‘perfect storm’ hit he did have millions that he could not touch because they were in an irrevocable trust. He became very depressed, blaming himself for what would have been a smart move had the economy, esp in his sector, tanked. He was a total family man and provider, and he did what he did so that his family would receive all his insurance and the trust and be set for life. As my mother said yesterday, in his depression he didn’t understand that this would be an enormous sadness to bear for the rest of our lives. Today I feel like a complete zombie….I still cannot believe this All American Nice guy is gone.
When someone is exhausted and depressed they are not thinking clearly and the problem is with very competent high achievers no one can even imagine them doing this…..It happens much more often than people think.
Just so sad…
Besides being a volunteer Board Director for a Homeless Coalition……David Kellermann was literally working his heart out to do the RIGHT thing at Freddie Mac as EXPOSE wrong doing.
"How did you feel when you heard that David Kellerman, acting CFO of Freddie Mac, allegedly committed suicide yesterday morning? I wondered what could possibly make a successful family man resort to taking his life.
In following coverage of this event, I viewed some reader comments on [a national news network] about the story. Theories of political intrigue, plots and payback abound. According to many of these comments, every single thing that happens to us is because of outside forces; everything we do has some ulterior motive.
Sometimes not everything is about politics.
Sometimes it’s about right and wrong.
When something like this happens, human nature dictates that we think the victim (yes, he is a victim) was guilty of something; that he took the ultimate way out to keep from getting caught.
We read that Mr. Kellerman recently received an $800,000 bonus, and that he had hired a security company to guard his house. We learn that reporters had been dogging him for comments about whether he deserved the bonus in view of Freddie Mac’s recent poor performance.
But buried in all the hype, after I managed to extricate myself from those disturbing comments about conspiracies and punishment, I found a Washington Post article that reported:
“Kellermann has figured in several recent controversies at Freddie Mac. He and a group of company lawyers tussled with the company’s regulator in early March as the firm prepared to file its quarterly disclosure. The group insisted that Freddie Mac disclose the $30 billion cost to the company of carrying out the Obama administration’s housing recovery plan, but the regulator urged the company not to do so.
Freddie Mac employees argued they had a legal obligation to disclose the information and would have to get the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees such disclosures, to sign off if they didn’t. The regulator backed down.”
Did you read this carefully? Do you get it? This isn’t the story of a guy who was trying to cover something up. It’s the story of a guy who was trying to do the right thing.
If the information is correct, Kellerman and his cohorts insisted on reporting Freddie Mac’s financial status as they believed it should be represented, disclosing all of its obligations. It sounds like they were able to get the regulators to agree, but at what price? Who knows what machinations took place during those struggles, and who knows what the aftermath was/will be like, for Freddie Mac and for Mr. Kellerman personally?
Could it be that this guy, David Kellerman, was just trying to do his job to the best of his abilities, embracing the ethics and spirit of financial accounting as well as the technical requirements? Could it be that, rather than having something to hide, rather than feeling guilty about his bonus, he simply could no longer tolerate the grinding of the giant gears that continually attempt to convince the public, us taxpayers, that everything will be all right and that our government has everything under control?
Not everything has political undercurrents. Sometimes it’s just about right and wrong and trying to do your job. I don’t know what Mr. Kellerman’s feelings were at the time he allegedly took his life. I have no inside (or other) information about his job performance, or about his history with Freddie Mac. I do know that if he had worked there since 1992 – he was 25 when he started – he saw massive changes come to what was probably the only company he ever worked for. It’s possible that, in the end, he just couldn’t stand to see the company he loved be eviscerated."
Ummm… so he was trying hard to do the ‘right’ thing, but was getting exhausted and so he killed himself? Sorry, but that’s something a good night’s sleep would take care of. This guy was off’d.
He knew something, or was going to say something, that someone else didn’t want said. Remember, there’s TRILLIONS of dollars at stake. Suicide? Please. No way, and I don’t care what the ‘investigators’ say.