Man who jumped from 18th floor of NYC tower identified as Bed Bath & Beyond CFO

Authored by cnbctv18.com and submitted by hooray4horus
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Mini The incident occurred just two days after Bed Bath & Beyond announced plans to shut 150 of its roughly 900 stores and lay off 20 percent of its staff.

The man, who jumped from the 18th floor of the 'Jenga' tower in Manhattan, New York, on September 2, has been identified as Gustavo Arnal, the Chief Financial Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, an US-based chain of retail stores, according to multiple reports.

Calls regarding the jump came in around 12.30 pm on September 2, as per a New York Police Department (NYPD) spokesperson, the reports said.

The incident occurred just two days after the company announced plans to shut 150 of its roughly 900 stores and lay off 20 percent of its staff.

Arnal reportedly sold more than 42,000 shares in the company, which was quite often identified as a 'meme stock', for USD 1 million, a little over two weeks ago, MarketBeat.com reported. At the time, Arnal owned 267,896 shares in the company with a value of a little under USD 6.5 million.

Arnal joined Bed Bath & Beyond in 2020 when the firm was already struggling because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to this, he was the CFO at London-based cosmetics giant Avon, and had also been at Proctor & Gamble for 20 years.

When Arnal joined Bed Bath & Beyond in April 2020, a company spokesperson had said that they were getting in world class talent that could offer new expertise, perspectives and experience as the firm rebuilt its business and that Arnal exemplified the same.

The company had added that Arnal's experience in delivering business transformation at leading firms, his knowledge of the consumer goods and retail space as well as his drive and energy would help accelerate its transformation plans.

Bed Bath & Beyond has lately been seeing its fortunes falter, with Mark Tritton, its CEO, being fired in June after the firm's sales dropped 25 percent in the first quarter.

It then hired an independent board director Sue Gove to replace him on an interim basis.

Last week, Gove said the retailer was seeing a significant positive momentum.

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PorygonTriAttack on September 4th, 2022 at 13:51 UTC »

The amount of stress he faced might have been just too much for him to handle. He was only brought on in 2020, which really wasn't that long ago. He had a lot of experience with other places, so it's not like he was some newbie. Just comes to show you that stress is a killer.

blackthunder365 on September 4th, 2022 at 12:33 UTC »

I work at Bed Bath. Work is going to be interesting tomorrow. Holy shit.

hooray4horus on September 4th, 2022 at 12:30 UTC »

From the article: "The incident occurred just two days after the company announced plans to shut 150 of its roughly 900 stores and lay off 20 percent of its staff"