Future
The Growing Cost of Making C.E.O.s Safe
The tragic killing of UnitedHealthCare’s Brian Thompson has spurred companies to ratchet up security for their most senior executives.
A manhunt is underway to find the killer of Brian Thompson, the C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare.Credit…Dave Sanders for The New York Times
C.E.O.s on edge
On the sidelines of the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, one topic dominated discussions: the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s C.E.O., Brian Thompson, just blocks away in Midtown Manhattan by a shooter who is still at large.
The killing of even a C.E.O. who was not well-known publicly has many executives worried about their own safety.
“Any C.E.O. has people who don’t like them,” Seth Besmertnik, the head of a software company, told The Times’s Emma Goldberg. “C.E.O.s have to let people go. C.E.O.s have people competing with their business.”
Executives are rethinking protection. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who runs Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told The Times that he had received a flood of phone calls on Wednesday about planned protection for a C.E.O. conference that he is hosting later this month in Manhattan.
Matthew Dumpert, a managing director of Kroll’s Enterprise Security Risk Management, told CNBC that his company had received a bunch of calls from C.E.O.s looking to upgrade their protection.
And Kathryn Wylde, the C.E.O. of the Partnership for New York City, said Mayor Eric Adams called her on Wednesday, told her that the shooting appeared to have been targeted and asked her to notify members of the partnership.
