瑞士悲剧：两位CEO为何相继自杀

    但最近，瑞士乡村也不复以往的平静。在7月23日，沃蒂耶自杀五周前，瑞士电信CEO卡斯滕•斯洛特在首都伯尔尼近郊的弗莱堡的家中自缢身亡。（六周之前，斯洛特的朋友、明信片公司ABC Verlag的CEO丹尼尔•埃契也在伯尔尼的家中自杀，只是此次事件鲜有报道。）与沃蒂耶一样，斯洛特也留下了一封遗书，据报道，遗书内容非常简短，且内容含糊。

    瑞士今年夏天发生的自杀悲剧肯定是巧合。但沃蒂耶和斯洛特身上的一些共同点却不容忽视。碰巧的是，这两位都在大公司身居高位，都面临巨大的竞争压力；瑞士电信是瑞士最大的电信公司，由政府控股。据称，2013年上半年，这家公司的收益下降了10%，原因是用户增加导致成本上升。其次，两人都相貌英俊，有着运动员一样的标准身材，对户外运动都充满了热爱。斯洛特热爱跑步、滑雪和滑冰，曾骑竞赛自行车行走2,200英里，还计划在伯尔尼成立一家自行车共享公司。斯洛特去世后，与斯洛特相识12年的《Bilanz》杂志电信业记者马克•考瓦斯基写道：“他相貌英俊，体格健壮，极富男子气概。卡斯滕•斯洛特的职业道路似乎无人能挡。”

    然而，一个因素使斯洛特的职场道路停滞不前。在考瓦斯基看来，公司高层之间的激烈冲突才是致使他选择自杀的关键原因。与沃蒂耶类似，2011年年中，一位强势的董事长韩穗里•鲁斯利的到来彻底改变了斯洛特在瑞士电信的命运。鲁斯利下定决心对公司进行改组，他曾成功将瑞士连锁超市Coop改造成一家大型公司，为自己赢得了声誉。他借鉴Coop的策略，要求提高利润，减少开支。然而，他对面临巨大变革的电信行业并不熟悉。而被要求执行此项任务的斯洛特有自己的想法。有时候，谁才是公司运营的负责人并不明确——有人认为，瑞士出现这样的问题，原因是董事会主席/董事长和CEO的职责有许多重叠的地方。在鲁斯利的前任任职期间，斯洛特获得了多年的相对自主性和自由，而随着新官上任，这种自由却突然受到了限制，因为鲁斯利要展示他的权威。考瓦斯基告诉《财富》杂志：“斯洛特与鲁斯利都是微观管理者。如果你把他们两人放在一起，由一个人管理另外一个人，肯定没有好结果。”。

    斯洛特生活中的压力非常明显。他去年曾对电视记者表示，失败的婚姻是对他“最沉重的打击”，让他始终充满了负疚感。多年以前，他爱上了公司的一位同事，从那之后便与妻子分居。他只能每两周去见一次他的三个孩子。而他的新伴侣经常出差。他的朋友告诉记者，斯洛特自杀的时候，他与爱人正在考虑分手。与鲁斯利持续的争斗则是雪上加霜。斯洛特的同事告诉考瓦斯基，在工作中，曾经热情洋溢的斯洛特变得沉默寡言，他在工作过程中做的陈述报告也是漏洞百出。失眠令他备受折磨。斯洛特从2006年开始经营瑞士电信，后来却开始公开物色新工作，咨询猎头，还有规划自己的自行车共享公司。他一直尽量避免在办公室工作，更喜欢通过智能电话保持联系。但在5月份，斯洛特对瑞士一家星期日报纸表示，每天24小时的工作要求令他感到窒息。他曾这样说：“如果你要不时查看智能手机，看看是否有新邮件，你就没法得到任何休息。我发现自己越来越难平静下来。”如今，这些话听起来更像是求助的信号。

    But the Swiss countryside has not been a picture of calm lately. On July 23, five weeks before Wauthier's death, Swisscom CEO Carsten Schloter, 49, hanged himself in his home in rural Fribourg, near the capital Bern. (Six weeks earlier, Schloter's friend Daniel Eicher, CEO of ABC Verlag, a greeting-card company, committed suicide at home in Bern, though little has been reported about his death.) Like Wauthier, Schloter left a suicide note, reportedly short and vague.

    The rash of Switzerland's summer suicides could well be coincidence. Yet the echoes between Wauthier and Schloter are hard to miss. Roughly contemporaries, both were in high-flying executive positions at large companies facing tough competitive pressures; Swisscom, the country's biggest telecom company mostly owned by the government, reported a 10% drop in earnings for the first half of 2013, citing the rising cost of adding subscribers. Both men were good-looking, supremely fit sports nuts, whose outdoor passions were central in their lives. Schloter was an ardent runner, snowboarder, and skier, logged about 2,200 miles a year on his racing bike, and was looking to launch a bike-sharing company in Bern. "Handsome and athletic, he embodied virility," Bilanz's telecom correspondent Marc Kowalsky wrote after the death of Schloter, whom he'd known well for 12 years. "Carsten Schloter's career seemed unstoppable."

    But one factor stopped Schloter's rise in its tracks, and in Kowalsky's opinion, was key to his final collapse: An intense conflict at the top of the company. Much like Wauthier, Schloter's life at Swisscom took a bad turn with the arrival of a powerful president, Hansueli Loosli, in mid-2011. Loosli was determined to shake up the company, having earned accolades for transforming Switzerland's supermarket chain Coop into a major corporation. He demanded higher profits and leaner expenses, using strategies borrowed from Coop. Yet he was new to the industry, which was undergoing major changes, and Schloter, who was charged with making that happen, had other ideas. Who exactly ran the company was sometimes unclear -- a problem, some believe, in Switzerland, where the chairman/president and CEO responsibilities overlap closely. Schloter's years of relative autonomy and freedom under Loosli's precedessor were quickly halted, as the new man imposed his authority. "Schloter and Loosli were both micromanagers," Kowalsky toldFortune. "If you put two people like that together and one is the superior of the other, it does not work well."

    The strains in Schloter's life were clear. He told a TV correspondent last year that his failed marriage was his "greatest defeat" and had left him feeling constant guilt. He had separated from his wife a few years ago, after falling in love with a Swisscom colleague; he saw his three children only every two weeks. But his new partner traveled much of the time, and friends have told journalists that the couple was considering breaking up by the time Schloter killed himself. Added to that was the ongoing struggle with Loosli. Colleagues told Kowalsky that at work, the ebullient Schloter was withdrawn and quiet, his presentations halting. Insomnia plagued him. Schloter, who'd run Swisscom since 2006, was openly hunting for a new job, consulting recruiters and plotting his bike-sharing company. He had long eschewed working in an office, preferring to be always available on his smartphone. But in May, Schloter told a Swiss Sunday newspaper he now felt "strangled" by the 24/7 work demands. "When you permanently check your smartphone to see if there are any new emails, it leads you to not find any rest whatsoever," he was quoted saying. "I find it increasingly difficult to calm down." That now sounds like a cry for help.