Fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson prompts wake-up call for nation’s executives: Experts

The targeted killing in Midtown Manhattan of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has sparked worry in C-suites around the globe as companies both large and small are reevaluating security for their top executives, experts said.

Surveillance video released by the New York Police Department, showed Thompson walking alone on a sidewalk as his masked killer brazenly ambushed him early Wednesday, shooting him multiple times in front of a witness.

“In this threat environment with the increased attacks on public officials, it’s surprising that a CEO of a major corporation would walk around with no security at all,” said Don Mihalek, a retired senior special agent for the U.S. Secret Service and an ABC News contributor.

Retired FBI special agent Richard Frankel, founder of RMF Crisis Management, said he received several calls from companies within hours of the shooting looking to reevaluate executive security.

“Some already have security and so they are deciding if they need to increase it, and others who have not had security are saying, ‘Do we need to have some security, or do we need to have at least a policy regarding security in place?'” said Frankel, also an ABC News contributor.

During a news conference Wednesday, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny confirmed the 50-year-old Thompson had no bodyguards with him as he walked to the New York Hilton hotel for a shareholders meeting.

Fortune 500 security chiefs hold video call

Dave Komendat, president of DSKomendat Risk Management in Seattle, told ABC News on Thursday that the fatal shooting prompted security officers at dozens of Fortune 500 companies to hold a video call to discuss boosted protection for executives.

“Chief security officers around the globe are looking at their executive security programs either on their own or they’re being asked to do so by CEOs and or their boards and making sure that they have the appropriate resources in place and capabilities in place to identify potential situations like this and then address them appropriately,” said Komendat, a retired chief security officer at Boeing.

He added, “There’s a lot of, I think, stepping back and looking internally right now at what do we have in place, how well does it work, where do we feel we have gaps, what do we need to close that gap and what are our next steps?”

Komendat said the security community is interested in the facts behind this case and is keenly monitoring the progress of the NYPD investigation.

“There’s far more unknown than known at this point,” Kamendat said.

Mihalek said while CEOs with household names like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg all have security details, many CEOs at small companies do not.

“I think there’s a bit of denial in the corporate world,” Mihalek said. “I think what the corporations are missing is that in this day and age with information freely available on the internet, every corporate executive is a public official. Every corporate executive’s name, face, and salary are out there. So, if anybody has a grievance, whether it’s an employee or an aggrieved customer, they know who these people are and they know where they work. So, I don’t know why more corporations aren’t investing more in making sure their decision-makers are better protected.”

Mihalek added, “But the lesson from yesterday is that’s the cost if you cut security for the potential cost.”

Other attacks on CEOs

Mihalek said there have been other examples over the years of executives paying the price for not having security details.

In 1992, Exxon Co. executive Sidney Reso was kidnapped from his New Jersey home and was found dead in a storage locker as his kidnappers were demanding a ransom of more than $18 million. Husband and wife Arthur and Irene Seale were arrested and convicted in the death and sent to prison. Arthur Seale was a former police officer and Exxon security consultant who was fired in 1987, officials said at the time.

Last month, Dean Skurka, the president and CEO of WonderFi, a Toronto cryptocurrency company, was kidnapped and released after his company paid $1 million in ransom, according to the Toronto Police Service. No arrests have been made in the case.

In 2019, California tech company CEO and cannabis entrepreneur Tushar Atre was kidnapped and killed when he tried to escape, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office. Two of the four people arrested and awaiting trial in the case were former employees of Atre, authorities said.

“You now have a lot of these smaller companies that are million- and billion-dollar valued companies. Even though it’s a smaller or start-up company, you’re not saying there isn’t a threat issue related to these CEOs,” said Frankel.

Frankel said he believes threats against CEOs and top executives at companies could escalate in the wake of the Thompson killing.

“I think it might be even worse because you’re going to see copycats,” Frankel said. “Now that this has been on the news … I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody said, ‘Hey, you know what? This guy did it wrong, and we’re going to do it this way.’”

Cost of protection

Frankel said that when most CEOs travel overseas their companies will obtain kidnap and ransom insurance and hire security details, including a driver.

“If you think you need it in foreign countries, you know, it’s possible that you’ll need it in the U.S.,” Frankel said. “We hopefully are safer than some of the other countries, but that doesn’t mean that there is no threat out there.”

He said some companies have foregone security for executives because of the high costs, which can run from several thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“If you have two people 24 hours a day, you’re paying an hourly fee just for that,” Frankel said. “The costs are definitely very high and I think that is why when you do these threat analyses the cost definitely comes into play. Part of dealing with this is letting the companies know that this is going to be a real line item in the companies.”

MORE: Who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson? What we know about the suspect on the run

Mihalek said that even with security there are no guarantees an executive will not be attacked.

“Even if he [Thompson] was walking down a street with two protection people, two bodyguards, yesterday may have still happened,” Mihalek said. “But there might have been a quicker response that could have potentially saved his life or could have made sure the intruder didn’t get away.”