The killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO follows years of mounting fear about executive safety
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 was 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.”
The killing comes as companies have become increasingly concerned with the security of their top executives, and it could confirm the worst fears in corporate America about the safety of prominent executives. More acutely, the targeting of a high-profile executive who isn’t the overarching CEO of the $561 billion enterprise raises new questions about whether personal security, corporate aircraft travel, and trained defensive drivers should extend to executives beyond the CEO. Thompson is the executive vice president and CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a role he was named to in 2021, while Andrew Witty is the CEO of the company.
“We don’t know the motivation. Certainly, if it’s a personal motivation, that changes the landscape a little bit,” Glen Kucera, the CEO of MSA Security, a consequence threat protection firm, tells Fortune. “If it was motivated by the business that they’re in, the healthcare 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 investments 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 has been on a steady rise since 2018, data from Esgauge shows. In 2018, only 13.2% of CEOs had these benefits, compared to 17.9% in 2024. (While companies disclose security technically as a perquisite, the benefit is often the result of an assessment of executives’ safety.)
However, the trend to boost security is far less pronounced among health care companies; Russell 3000 health care companies actually trended downward from 0.8% in 2018, to 0.5% in 2024, Esgauge data reveals. 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, the 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 UnitedHealthcare, 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.
And 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. Disclosures from other health care companies show similar trends. Elevance disclosed aircraft usage for CEO Gail Boudreaux, but other execs didn’t have aircraft disclosures.
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,” the company 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.”
