The CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down this morning in Manhattan. Brian Thompson, 50, was accosted outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown, and later pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West hospital.
Police say that the killing was a targeted attack rather than a random act of violence. New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the shooting a “premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack.” The shooter was captured on camera, and last seen in Central Park. They have not been apprehended. The motive for the murder is unknown, but Thompson’s wife told NBC News that “there were some people that had been threatening him.”
Thompson was an executive vice president at UnitedHealth Group and CEO of its UnitedHealthcare division, a role he was named to in 2021, while Andrew Witty is CEO of UnitedHealth Group. Thompson’s killing comes as companies have grown increasingly concerned about the security of their top executives, and it could confirm corporate America’s worst fears. More acutely, the targeting of a high-profile executive raises new questions about whether personal security, corporate aircraft travel, and trained defensive drivers should extend to roles beyond the CEO.
“We don’t know the motivation. Certainly, if it’s a personal motivation, that changes the landscape a little bit,” Glen Kucera, president of the enhanced protection services division at Allied Universal, a security services company, tells Fortune. “If it was motivated by the business that they’re in, the health care business, or anything that could be related, then certainly that’s a wake-up call to a lot of CEOs and executives traveling throughout the country and the world.”
Increased investment in executive security
Large companies seem to be increasingly aware of safety risks for their top executives.
In a review of CEO perks between 2020 and 2023, advisory firm ISS-Corporate found that home security perquisites for CEOs of S&P 500 companies rose from 12.6% in 2020, to 15.7% in 2023. And the prevalence of personal and home security perquisites among S&P 500 companies have been on a steady rise since 2018, data from Esgauge shows. In 2018, only 13.2% of CEOs had these benefits, compared with 17.9% in 2024.
However, the trend to boost security is far less pronounced among health care companies. Among Russell 3000 health care companies, personal security costs actually trended downward from 0.8% in 2018, to 0.5% in 2024, Esgauge data reveals. And the median value of security for CEOs in general in 2023 was around $50,000, according to WTW, an insurance broker and risk management company.
Some of the world’s most prominent executives, however, are costing their companies millions a year in protection services. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, now travels with up to 20 security guards, the New York Times reported. Personal security for Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai costs around $6.8 million a year, according to SEC filings. And Meta Platforms increased security spending for Mark Zuckerberg from $10 million to $14 million a year in February 2023, according to public documents.
“We believe that Mr. Zuckerberg’s role puts him in a unique position: He is synonymous with Meta, and as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg,” the company wrote last year in disclosures.
“When you’re talking about somebody who’s worth millions of dollars or billions of dollars, and they are in charge of an entire company, there is a real possibility of kidnapping, there’s a real possibility of extortion, there’s a real possibility of attempts on their lives,” Bill Herzog, CEO of Arizona-based LionHeart Security Services, previously told Fortune about executive security.
However, most security focus has been at the CEO and chairman level, and not among other named executive officers. At UnitedHealth Group, the company requires CEO Andrew Witty to fly on a corporate jet for all business travel, and encourages him to fly on the jet for personal and family travel. Based on the company’s most recent disclosures, Witty did not use the jet for personal travel in 2023. But the company did not disclose other personal security benefits for executives, including Thompson.
Cardinal Health spent $445,732 on corporate jet travel, home security, and monitoring and liability for CEO Jason Hollar. The company did not disclose the same benefits for other top executives, according to the company’s 2024 proxy statement.
Other companies have taken a harder stance. Meta in January and February 2021 approved new personal security services for its entire board, given the level of scrutiny at the company and the “charged atmosphere following the 2020 U.S. elections and the attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Meta told investors. It also disclosed that it provides personal security for other execs in response to specific threats.
“Nobody ever goes to work expecting this to happen to him, right? So that’s why it’s so important to, you know, be informed. Be aware of your surroundings. Have good security protocol in the event that this does happen,” says Kucera. “You have to be prepared.”
Read more: The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has set the business world on edge as police search for answers
