Shooting of UnitedHealth chief Brian Thompson prompts corporate security rethink

Police cover evidence with paper cups after UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson was shot as he entered the New York Hilton. Photo / AFP

Large companies rushed to assess whether top employees have sufficient protection after the slaying of a US insurance executive in New York stoked broad concerns about corporate security.

After Wednesday’s shooting, heads of security for groups on both sides of the Atlantic raced to share intelligence and make inquiries with specialist companies on how to shield top executives, industry participants said.

The sudden focus on corporate security comes after Brian Thompson, the boss of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance unit, was fatally shot at dawn while walking alone to a corporate gathering in midtown Manhattan.

New York police on Thursday were engaged in a sweeping manhunt to find the suspect in the shooting, which authorities described as a “premeditated, targeted attack”. Bullet casings found at the scene were inscribed with the words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” — in a possible allusion to a book on insurers allegedly denying claims.

The attack against a high-profile American executive prompted dozens of security officials at major companies in the US and UK to convene a call on Wednesday as they sought to understand what risks they are exposed to and how to mitigate them, said Dave Komendat, a former security executive at Boeing and founder of consultancy DSKomendat Risk Management Services.

“Could this happen to us? What are we not doing today that we could be doing? These were the questions chief security officers are being asked by their boards,” Komendat said.

Brian Stephens, a former top Bank of America security official who now works at consultancy Teneo, added the shooting was “a very difficult wake-up call ... a lot of security leaders in these organisations are getting attention on things that they were talking about for a while”.

Allied Universal, a large security company, received hundreds of calls from prospective and existing clients after Wednesday’s incident, Glen Kucera, the head of the group’s enhanced protection services, said.

UnitedHealth, a blue-chip company that provides healthcare and insurance services for tens of millions of Americans, did not disclose its spending on security in regulatory filings ahead of Wednesday’s incident.

Several people who have seen chief executive Andrew Witty at public events in the past year said he only had a small security detail. However, he is required to use corporate aircraft when travelling for business reasons as a security measure and was encouraged to use them on leisure trips. The Minnesota-based company did not respond to requests for comment on its security posture.

Kucera said it was not unusual that Thompson, a lower-level official than Witty, would lack a security detail, adding that many executives “walk around New York unprotected”.

However, personal security is adopted as default by executives in “controversial business”, such as social media, or by those with a major public profile “like Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase”, he said.

He added: “An event like this certainly will make companies reconsider what they do to protect their executives.”

Many big businesses have significant budgets allocated to securing top executives, according to regulatory filings.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is thought to be among the biggest recipients of security spending, with the social media group allocating more than US$9 million ($15.2m) on his personal security last year. It also provided a US$14m allowance for additional security costs “related to Mr Zuckerberg and his family’s personal security”. The company said this spending was in response to “specific threats”.

Pharmaceutical groups Pfizer and Moderna boosted their security spending after the pandemic, and their senior executives are accompanied by bodyguards at all public occasions, said people familiar with the matter. Last year, Pfizer spent almost US$800,000 on security services for chief executive Albert Bourla.

Moderna authorised the provision of personal and home security to certain executives in 2020. In a filing, it said the decision had been taken “in response to the increased profile of our company and our executives as we pursued the development of a vaccine against Covid-19″.

Its latest regulatory filing disclosed US$1.1m in security spending for chief executive Stéphane Bancel, but none for its other executives.

Protests against controversial global events, such as the war in Gaza, have frequently targeted companies, another factor that helped drive increased demand for security over the past year, according to Jason Towse, head of business services at UK security group Mitie.

“As a result of the incidents in Israel, we’re providing services to senior executives in the UK who are from those areas,” he said. “People feel vulnerable.”

One chief executive in the defence sector, which has also come under criticism during the war in Gaza, said he recently moved house because his address was compromised. The executive added he wanted the business to obtain a higher public profile, but that was not possible because of the risks to him of greater exposure.

Last year, BlackRock more than tripled spending on home security for Larry Fink to almost US$600,000 after the chief executive of the world’s biggest asset manager became a target for “anti-woke” activists. Some US$217,000 is also spent on his bodyguards.

But no recent incidents have garnered as much attention as the killing of an executive in Manhattan. Towse said businesses would now be asking: “What security procedures do we have in place to mitigate this threat?”

Additional reporting by Josephine Cumbo, Ortenca Aliaj, Laura Pitel and Joshua Franklin.

Written by: Oliver Barnes, Oliver Telling, Louis Ashworth and Marianna Giusti

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