By Sabrina Valle, Arriana McLymore and Siddharth Cavale
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. industry conferences, including a major San Francisco healthcare meeting, have stepped up security for attendees this year after a health insurance executive was murdered near a December investor meeting in New York.
Last year, thousands of executives, analysts, investors and others attending industry conferences wandered freely through the sites and neighboring hotels. But event organizers, working with police, added more law enforcement both inside and outside a retail expo in New York and at JPMorgan's healthcare conference in San Francisco this week, as well as at the annual CES technology show in Las Vegas earlier this month.
"There's a much more significant police presence, and I think JPM is really taking it seriously, and I think that's appreciated," said Teresa Graham, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Roche, in an interview at the JPMorgan conference.
The National Retail (NYSE:NNN) Federation's (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 lots more security this time," Eric Olson, NRF's vice president of content strategy, said at the conference.
The NRF works annually with New York City police on security for the event, which is usually the first conference at the Javits Center every year. The Javits Center and NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.
Metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs were also present at this month's Detroit Auto Show.
HEIGHTENED AWARENESS
Security consultants said they have had numerous discussions with executives over additional protection following the Dec. 4 murder of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel, particularly for speaking engagements. The accused killer, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was captured five days later in Pennsylvania.
Gun detection company Omnilert, which installs technology at school districts, is getting interest from major hotel chains, said Omnilert CEO David Fraser. The company uses artificial intelligence to monitor security footage to recognize guns in a fraction of a second.
Security experts said websites with conference agendas are being updated with speaker information, keynote locations and times much closer to event dates to shield speakers' identities.
"If you're going to pay 10 grand ($10,000) - which is cheap - for somebody to come speak at a conference, you're going to pay an extra, probably two grand, for an executive protection agent," said Michael Julian, president of security firm MPS Security & Protection.
The annual CES trade show - formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show - increased its security protocols "in response to recent tragic events," said John Kelley, vice president and show director of the Consumer Technology Association, in a statement.
At the healthcare event, the number of security personnel from JPMorgan and the Westin St. Francis hotel was higher onsite, with San Francisco police officers present in the halls and conference rooms. Healthcare bankers from three big institutions said their teams allotted more time between meetings, anticipating disruptions that did not materialize.
On Monday, fewer than two dozen protesters, half of them retirees, voiced their grievances peacefully outside the venue. Their chants, "deny, delay, depose," echoed the words found on bullet shell casings at Thompson's murder site, a reference to a book about insurance claim practices. Only one protester returned on Tuesday, the second day of the four-day event.
Most U.S. corporations spent little on executive security in the past. An Equilar analysis shows that about 100 S&P 500 companies reported executive security expenses for 2023. That spend rose to $71.9 million for those companies from $50.4 million in 2019, and experts said that figure should continue to rise.
"Within the corporate security space this seems to be a bellwether event that is not going away quickly," said Fraser. "I thought frankly I thought this was going to slow down a little bit, but the momentum of it just continues to escalate.”