Industry conferences kick off 2025 with more security following murder of US executive

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San Francisco/New York: US industry conferences, including this year’s San Francisco Healthcare Meeting, have increased security for attendees after a health insurance executive was killed near an investor meeting in New York in December.

Last year, thousands of executives, analysts, investors and others attending industry conferences roamed freely among other sites and neighboring hotels. But event organizers, working with police, have stepped up more inside and outside at the Retail Expo in New York and JPMorgan’s healthcare conference in San Francisco this week, as well as the annual CES technology show in Las Vegas earlier this month. Involved law enforcement.

“There’s a very significant police presence, and I think JPM is taking it really seriously, and I think that’s appreciated,” said Teresa Graham, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Roche. Oh said in an interview at the JPMorgan conference.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) conference and expo included both New York State and City officers patrolling the Jacob Javits Convention Center and stationed near the entrance as attendees were being registered.

“There’s a lot more security this time,” Eric Olson, NRF’s vice president of content strategy, said at the conference.

The NRF annually works with the New York City Police on security for the event, which is usually the first conference held at the Javits Center each year. The Javits Center and the NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.

There were also metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs at this month’s Detroit auto show.

Higher awareness

Security consultants said they had several discussions with executives after the Dec. 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel for additional security, particularly for speaking engagements. The accused killer, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was captured five days later in Pennsylvania.

Omnilert, the gun detection company that installs the technology in school districts, is getting interest from major hotel chains, said Omnilert CEO David Fraser. The company uses artificial intelligence to monitor security footage to identify guns in a fraction of a second.

Conference agenda websites are being updated closer to event dates to protect speaker information, key locations and speakers’ identities, security experts said.

“If you’re going to pay 10 grand ($10,000) — which is cheap — for someone to speak at a conference, you’re going to pay an extra, maybe two grand, for an executive protection agent. ” said. Michael Julian, president of security firm MPS Security & Protection.

John Kelly, vice president and show director of the Consumer Technology Association, said in a statement that the annual CES trade show — formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show — increased its security protocols “in response to recent tragic events.” .

At the health care event, security personnel from JPMorgan and the Westin St. Francis hotel were outnumbered, with San Francisco police officers in the halls and conference rooms. Healthcare bankers at three major institutions said their teams allocated more time between meetings, anticipating disruptions that didn’t materialize.

On Monday, less than two dozen protesters, half of them retired, peacefully aired their grievances outside the venue. Their slogan, “Deny, Delay, Depose,” echoes the words found on the shell casings found at the scene of Thompson’s murder, a reference to a book about insurance claims practices. Only one protester returned on Tuesday, the second day of the four-day event.

Most American corporations spent little on executive security in the past. A peer analysis shows that nearly 100 S&P 500 companies reported management security spending for 2023. Those costs rose from $50.4 million to $71.9 million for these companies in 2019, and experts said the figure should continue to rise.

“Within the corporate security space it seems like this is a vicious cycle that isn’t going away anytime soon,” Fraser said. “I obviously thought it was going to slow down a little bit, but it continues to pick up.”