Financier Hurls Himself Off 32nd-Floor Balcony While Being Shown Luxury Apartment By Agent

A French financier reportedly jumped to his death from the 32nd-floor balcony of a luxury apartment building while taking a tour of the unit with a real estate agent in Manhattan on Thursday, May 26.

The 43-year-old man, identified as Charles-Henry Kurzen, a financial banker who lived in Brooklyn, was reportedly taking a look at an apartment at 100 United Nations Plaza in the Turtle Bay neighborhood with a real estate agent when things took a tragic turn.

During the tour of the apartment, Kurzen reportedly asked the real estate agent to show him to the balcony of the 32nd-floor flat. After walking over to the balcony, however, Kurzen allegedly suddenly climbed over the ledge and jumped to his death, landing on a third-floor patio. Kurzen was pronounced dead at the scene, New York Post reported.

Kurzen was a financier who graduated from the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris (ESCP) Business School and was a partner at Saltbox Partners LLC.

According to a Saltbox Partners LLC biography on their website, Kurzen had a long career working in French and U.S. finance and had also served as an analyst in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group at Lazard Freres & Co. in Paris, the Daily Mirror reported.

“Charles-Henry has been with Saltbox since the beginning," the Saltbox Partners website stated. "He has over 14 years of experience in the banking sector and has worked with Nina since moving to New York to start his project finance career at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank where he was involved in the origination, structuring, and execution of 15 financings of over $5 billion."

"Charles-Henry is a true practitioner who enjoys all the intricacies of non-recourse financings and the challenges of bringing new deal profiles and sponsors to market. His experience has spanned financing coal mining development to the introduction of renewable power in South Africa," the bio added.

Kurzen was also reportedly quoted in a 2004 New Yorker article as a regular attendee of “French Tuesdays” — a group of weekly parties hosted for French ex-patriots in New York City.

A coworker who rushed to the scene after hearing about the tragedy declined to comment about the incident. However, he described Kurzen as a dear friend.