PhillyInc: Health-insurance overhaul has insurers dealing
Posted on Tue, Oct. 5, 2010
By Mike Armstrong
Passage of the federal overhaul of health insurance earlier this year has some insurers in a deal-making mood.
Not with you or me or our employers, but with smaller, often technology-related companies. UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s Ingenix unit bought Newtown Square-based Executive Health Resources in August. Later that month, Philadelphia based Cigna Corp. acquired Vanbreda International of Belgium to expand overseas.
Independence Blue Cross sold its FutureScripts pharmacy benefits management business to Catalyst Health Solutions Inc. for $225 million in cash in mid-September. Then, on Oct. 1, Radnor-based Health Benefits Direct Corp. said it had raised $5.4 million from Independence Blue Cross and several other investors.
Health Benefits Direct, which intends to change its name to InsPro Technologies Corp., provides Web-based insurance administration software to health insurance carriers and third-party administrators. And InsPro is as tiny as Independence Blue Cross is huge.
Health Benefits Direct had annual revenues of just $7 million in 2009 compared with Independence Blue Cross' $10.5 billion.
As its name implies, the company at one time was in the business of selling health and life insurance directly to individuals and families. But that stopped in the first quarter of 2009, and Health Benefits Direct sold off its call center and transferred those customers to eHealth Insurance Services Inc. in a deal worth $1.28 million.
After selling off its Insurint Web-based agent portal, which aggregates quotes and underwriting information, in March, Health Benefits Direct was left with its InsPro software business in Eddystone, which it had acquired in 2007.
Moving to delist
The regulatory arm of the New York Stock Exchange will suspend the common stock of C&D Technologies Inc., the Blue Bell-based power systems maker, before the market opens Friday.
The exchange on Monday said that the market capitalization of C&D had been less than $15 million - the minimum threshold for listing - for 30 consecutive trading days.
NYSE Regulation Inc. is seeking to delist C&D's common stock, a move that the company had said in mid-September would prompt it to restructure its finances through a deal with the largest holders of its convertible notes.
Under that deal, C&D would cut its total debt from $170 million to less than $45 million. Note holders would wind up with up to 95 percent of C&D's common stock.
The NYSE said C&D has the right to a review by a committee of the board of directors of NYSE Regulation and could appeal the staff's decision.
Word of the NYSE's decision came after the market had closed Monday. Trading in C&D shares closed at 37 cents, up 2.89 cents or 8.5 percent, giving it a market value of $9.79 million. That's a small fraction of its $336 million in annual revenue.
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Contact Mike Armstrong at 215-854-2980 or marmstrong@phillynews.com. See his blog at http://www.phillyinc.biz">www.phillyinc.biz.
