EARLY one afternoon in July, Dennis J. Bertrum, a former top brokerage executive at Prudential Securities, leapt out of the bedroom window of his 26th-floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

No note was found, but the police said the death was a suicide.

In and out of work since 1996, Mr. Bertrum, a pioneer in the managed account business who was described by friends as a bon vivant, had been on a persistent quest to return to the brokerage business that he had loved since his days selling stocks for E.F. Hutton in the 1970's, colleagues say. But for Mr. Bertrum, an unemployed 55-year-old who friends say had a history of Jekyll-and-Hyde-type mood swings, few doors were opening.

Just weeks before he took his own life, he had been interviewing for a senior job in the private wealth management division of Merrill Lynch but he and the firm could not come to terms, friends said, adding that they do not blame the firm for what ultimately happened. Merrill declined to comment.

Instead, his friends and family described a man who for years had been in therapy for a bipolar condition and who had quit taking his medication, Wellbutrin, just three weeks before his death. Mr. Bertrum was twice divorced and in the process of ending a relationship, and family members say that with no income, he was feeling financial pressure. His brother, Carl A. Butrum, who called him a week before he died, said he was on a down swing.