PR for Tragedy

This is likely to be one of my darkest posts. A story from Crain's Chicago Business today reported that a futures trader died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after losing several million dollars Wednesday. Please understand, this is not something to joke about. The loss and pain to his wife and family members will go on long after this story is forgotten.

Here's is what I find simply unthinkable with this tradgic incident. The story that is linked above says that, "Rosenthal Collins CEO Scott Gordon declined to comment. RCG, which backed Mr. Luizzi’s trades, has more than $1 billion in customer funds."

Amazing. Where does this CEO get his public relations coaching from? With $1 billion in customer funds, you would think that he could find a few words to say out of respect. While Rosenthal Collins is not responsible for this traders personal decision, you would hope that their CEO would use some common sense in saying something polite on behalf of his company.

The "no comment" response has been gone from PR 101 for a long time. And when something as terrible as this happens, you would hope the CEO over so much wealth, would search for some wisdom to better communicate through the media.