The chief executive of US health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare was shot and killed outside a New York hotel on Wednesday in an apparently targeted hit, local media reported.
With the killer on the loose, a massive manhunt was launched as detectives cordoned off entire streets of the city and conducted a fingertip search around the downtown Hilton hotel.
The UHC company is a major player in US private healthcare, providing workplace health insurance benefits as well as administering health care products like Medicare and Medicaid for older and low-income people funded by state budgets.
The New York Times reported that Brian Thompson, 50, was shot just before 7:00 am at the hotel in the Midtown district of Manhattan, with the CNBC broadcaster suggesting a silencer had been used.
The gunman, described as wearing a black face mask, then fled the scene.
Police confirmed a shooting at the location with officers swarming around the area near the hotel, a usually busy corner of Manhattan that would have been filled with commuters at the time of the shooting.
UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UHC, had revenues of $100.8 billion in the third quarter of the year.
UnitedHealthcare's Employer and Individual products are used by almost 30 million people in the United States according to an investor presentation.
Thompson's total compensation in 2023 was $10.2 million according to a regulatory filing.
He had been chief executive of UnitedHealthcare since April 2021, according to a separate Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Before that he oversaw UnitedHealthcare's government programs including Medicare from July 2019 to April 2021.
The company was due to hold an investor day in New York on Wednesday at which Thompson was scheduled to deliver a keynote speech.
The event has subsequently been canceled, CNBC reported, and the company did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
The New York Hilton Midtown is one of the city's biggest hotels, popular with tourists and business travelers, and describes itself as Manhattan's largest self-contained function space.
It was not answering calls in the wake of the incident.
Outside the hotel, senior police commanders briefed officers, as plainclothes detectives passed by upturned paper cups marking evidence.
