Blackstone spends huge amounts protecting its staff

After the murder of senior Blackstone managing director Wesley LePatner yesterday in its New York head office, the private capital firm seems likely to review security of its buildings and staff.

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Blackstone's most recent annual report reveals that it spends large amounts of money protecting its most senior employees. Blackstone no longer breaks out money spent on personal protection for senior executives as part of their individual pay, deeming that it amounts to a benefit for the company as a whole. In 2022, however, when these expenses were last broken out, Blackstone said it spent $3.5m on security services for founder and CEO Steven Schwarzman and his family alone.

Senior executives like Schwarzman benefit from the services of "close protection agents" assigned to keep them safe. Blackstone also employs former military and police personnel to protect its offices. Writing last week on LinkedIn, a former member of the New York police department and VP of physical security at Blackstone in New York City, said his job involves everything from physical security to emergency building work. Blackstone also has a dog, "Annie", who is trained to sniff explosives, at the entrance to the building.

Yesterday's shooting suggests these precautions were unfortunately not enough, although it's also not clear what could have been done differently faced with an individual armed with an assault rifle.

Kenneth Bombace, chief executive officer of New York-based Global Threat Solutions, provides security services to ultra-high net worth individuals, family offices and corporate clients, says the emphasis is often on keeping key people safe. If the CEO and C-suite officers are present during an attack like yesterday's, Bombace says the protocol is usually to move them to a designated safe room. "Some of these rooms can just be a windowless room near the primary offices where security personnel will move them to and then standby in a defensive posture until the emergency is over.  Others are built to prevent an attacker from entering and offer a heightened security structure," Bombace says. While a threat is active, he says it's rare to move people out of the building.   

Bombace says firms like Blackstone will usually position close protection officers (CPOs) in offices near those of executives. Following last year's shooting of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, he says demand for close protection has increased, particularly in Silicon Valley and among tech firms.

However, there's often a tendency to ramp up security after an incident, only to relax it again in the interest of cost-cutting. "The bottom line is that these incidents are rare, but they happen. Close protection teams are to prevent what could possibly happen and not what occurs in a regular basis," says Bombace. To avoid C-suite cuts, he says many companies are enshrining close protection in their by laws. "In other words, the executive is an asset of the company and whoever is in that position will receive security regardless of whether or not they believe they need it."   

It's thought that Wesley was killed in the lobby to 345 Park Avenue when the gunman entered and sprayed bullets across the occupants shortly after 6.30pm. Employees in Blackstone's offices hid in pantries and barricaded themselves in. LePatner seems to have been close to Jon Gray, Schwarzman's number two, who described her as "wicked smart" and a person who "cares deeply about others" at an awards ceremony two years ago.

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