ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 16, 1997 TAG: 9701160046
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
Columbia/HCA to buy company for $1.3 billion
Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. said Wednesday it will buy managed-care company Value Health Inc. for $1.3 billion, canceling Value Health's plans to spin off its lucrative pharmacy benefit management business to shareholders.
Nashville, Tenn.-based Columbia/HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, has been gobbling up hospitals during its rapid expansion over the past three years. It operates 344 hospitals and 368 other facilities in 37 states, including Lewis-Gale Hospital in Salem and Pulaski Community and Montgomery Regional hospitals in the New River Valley.
Value Health's prescription benefit business, ValueRx, accounted for 60 percent of its profits last year.
Columbia/HCA will pay 35 million of its shares for all the shares of Value Health.
-Associated Press
NS loses again in fight for Conrail
PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court Wednesday denied Norfolk Southern Corp.'s request to block a key vote by Conrail shareholders on CSX Corp.'s acquisition bid. The ruling by Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia paves the way for shareholders to vote Friday on whether to exempt Conrail from a state law that bars two-tiered offers such as CSX's $9.3 billion bid for the Philadelphia-based railroad.
Conrail has rejected NS's $10.32 billion cash offer. NS hoped to delay the vote until its appeal of a Jan. 9 decision upholding a CSX-Conrail lockout agreement can be heard.
-Bloomberg Business News
Prudential faces new investigation
NEWARK, N.J. - A federal judge has ordered another investigation into whether Prudential Insurance Co. of America responded properly to an inquiry of its admittedly deceptive sales practices.
Prudential lawyers and executives will be asked if they withheld a relevant memo from regulators and wrongly shredded papers in a Florida office.
Newark-based Prudential, the nation's largest life insurer, says it volunteered the memo and only duplicate documents were destroyed.
U.S. District Judge Alfred Wolin, who is overseeing a class-action lawsuit on Prudential's sales tactics, has appointed a New Jersey lawyer to carry out an independent probe. His report is due by Jan. 24.
Wolin last week fined Prudential $1 million after finding that its agents in at least four offices had destroyed documents that could relate to the class-action suit.
-Associated Press
Grand jury indicts ADM informant
Mark Whitacre, the former executive with Archer Daniels Midland Co. who worked as a government informant in a price-fixing investigation, was indicted Wednesday on charges that he defrauded the company of more than $9million.
The 45-count indictment by a federal grand jury charges that Whitacre conspired with other executives to steal the money in a complex scheme involving fraudulent invoices, front companies, forged records and Swiss bank accounts.
Whitacre has acknowledged getting the money, but has said for more than a year that it came through an illegal, corporatewide compensation system for top executives.
-The New York Times
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