Lessons from a shocking CEO murder

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

The fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO of America’s largest health insurer, in Manhattan last week sent chills through US boardrooms. The suspect charged with the UnitedHealthcare executive’s murder on Monday was found with a handwritten manifesto outlining “some ill will towards corporate America”, according to officials. After an election campaign marred by two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the killing marks yet another example of how individuals are acting out their frustrations through violence, this time against a business figure.

Physical attacks on senior executives are, thankfully, rare. Discontent with a multitude of social ills in America — one of the advanced world’s most unequal societies — has, however, long made companies, as well as politicians, a target for anger. Though this is usually voiced peacefully, activism both on the left and the right has increasingly been turning violent. By some measures, US political violence is at its highest in several decades. The nation’s polarised and toxic discourse, sometimes fuelled by social media, is partly to blame.

Thompson’s murder lays bare the extent of anger towards the US healthcare system in particular. Many complain of difficulties in obtaining affordable insurance coverage and being denied certain treatments. In July, about 100 people gathered outside UnitedHealthcare’s headquarters in part to protest against the way the company reviews treatments before it agrees to pay for them. The words “deny”, “defend”, and “depose” were discovered on the bullet casings at the scene of Thompson’s killing, an apparent reference to criticisms of insurance companies’ tactics.

However deep-rooted the frustrations may be, nothing justifies resorting to violence, or indeed condoning it. Sadly, a sizeable minority thinks otherwise. One in five Americans believe that violence is a solution to domestic political divisions. Indeed, the cold reaction to Thompson’s murder on social media is troubling. The suspect’s X account has experienced a surge in followers, with some commenters describing him as a “king” and demanded that police “free him”. Videos have surfaced of people dressing like the alleged killer.

This normalisation of violence means major companies cannot afford to be complacent about executive security. The proportion of big US companies providing security for at least one top executive has risen slightly in recent years to above one in four. Many executives of technology and oil companies — which have often come in for public criticism — do have personal security and surveillance available for their family. Meta spent $23mn on security for Mark Zuckerberg last year. That Thompson did not have any security detail when he was gunned down during rush hour should raise questions. His widow says he had faced threats before.

For better or worse, demands on CEOs have risen over time. Expectations now extend from delivering returns for shareholders to navigating the social, political and environmental implications of their business. This has come alongside a push for executives to be the even more visible faces of their companies, just as social media has made business leaders more accessible to the public.

Executives are of course well rewarded for handling these pressures. But, in America’s gun-wielding society, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the coarsening public discourse turned lingering anger towards an industry and the executive class into a violent vigilante act. That US companies are now scrambling to assess if top employees have sufficient security is a sad but necessary sign of the times.