Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 14, 1993 TAG: 9309140049
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Norwood H. Davis Jr., chairman of the Richmond-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Virginia, said Monday the company remains committed to keeping a major presence in Roanoke.
"Roanoke is an excellent place to do business," he told the annual meeting of Downtown Roanoke Inc. at the Radisson Patrick Henry Hotel.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield, with 914 employees in four buildings, is downtown Roanoke's sixth-largest employer, and it expects to add another 50 jobs in 1994, Davis said.
He credited Roanoke City Manager Robert Herbert with capitalizing on merger in 1986 by not opposing consolidation of the two Blues plans, then based in Richmond and in Roanoke.
Davis said he promised then to try to keep employment in Roanoke level with the 500 workers the company had at that time.
Until 1989, Davis said, the company operated a regional headquarters in Roanoke. Then it shifted all government and individual insurance here, with a challenge to make those lines of business grow.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield's Roanoke office also has started to market student health insurance nationwide and is developing an insurance policy for individuals to sell outside the state.
Revenues of the Roanoke units have more than doubled in the past four years, Davis said. He said they pump about $40 million a year into the Roanoke Valley economy through salaries and purchases from vendors.
He said the company also has donated $500,000 to 10 free clinics in Western Virginia, $400,000 to the Child Health Investment Partnership in Roanoke and a station wagon to the New River Valley Area Agency on Aging.
by CNB