CVS and Aetna Make It Final

CVS and Aetna Make It Final

by | Dec 3, 2018 9:55 am | Managed Care

Fifty-one weeks after pharmacy retail giant CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) announced its intent to acquire managed care giant Aetna (NYSE: AET), the deal that shook the healthcare industry closed. And now the fun begins. When first announced on December 3, 2017, the deal had many industry players scratching their heads. What does a pharmacy chain with 9,700 pharmacy locations and 1,100 MinuteClinic walk-in clinics, not to mention a major pharmacy benefits manager (Caremark), need with a health insurance company? The answer, as CVS CEO Larry Merlo explained over and over again, is the desire to bring a new model of health care to the masses, by expanding services offerings at its pharmacies so... Read More »
Disruption Hits the Digital Health Sector

Disruption Hits the Digital Health Sector

by | Aug 16, 2018 4:54 pm | eHealth, Private Equity

Retailers have been the big disruptors in the healthcare market in recent months, but not in digital health. CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) and Aetna’s (NYSE: AET) merger, announced in December 2017, is still on track. Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) deal for PillPack has many wondering what’s next in the online pharmaceutical space. Now there’s Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), the consumer electronics retailer, entering the healthcare arena. The company announced on August 15 it was throwing down $800 million in cash to acquire GreatCall, Inc., an aging-in-place player, from GTCR. The private equity firm bought GreatCall about a year ago, in June 2017, for an undisclosed price.... Read More »
Q1:18 Health Care M&A Stays Strong

Q1:18 Health Care M&A Stays Strong

by | Apr 20, 2018 10:05 am | Healthcare Market Updates

Health care merger and acquisition activity in the first quarter of 2018 kept pace with the previous quarter in 2017. Compared with the fourth quarter of 2017, deal volume increased 1%, to 386 transactions. However, deal volume was down 12% compared with the same quarter the year before. Combined spending in the first quarter reached $112.9 billion, a decrease of 2% compared with the nearly $115.0 billion spent in the previous quarter, according to HealthCareMandA.com. Thanks to the announcement of a multi-billion-dollar deal in Q1:18, deal value rose 90% compared with $59.6 billion spent in Q1:17. Health Care M&A Market – Deal Volume by Sector Source: HealthCareMandA,com, April 2018... Read More »

March Added One Mega-Deal, and Saw Another One Halted

by | Apr 6, 2018 11:34 am | Hospitals

After a busy M&A month in February, with 125 deals reported, March didn’t disappoint. Preliminary results show deal volume equaled the previous month’s total. The figures look good, in the face of the recent stock market swings, the Trump administration’s talk of trade wars and cancelling trade deals. But a look back to March 2017 shows this month’s deal volume is down 19% compared with the 155 deals logged then. And that wase in the face of the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Check out the April issue of Health Care M&A News for the deal volume and value charts, by sector. We’re not saying this year’s healthcare market is lacking in... Read More »
Cigna Bids $67 Billion to Stay in the Race

Cigna Bids $67 Billion to Stay in the Race

by | Mar 9, 2018 4:17 pm | Managed Care, Physician Medical Groups, Private Equity

Cigna (NYSE: CI) is buying Express Scripts Holdings (NYSE: ESRX) for $67 billion, including debt. Some company was going to buy it, we just weren’t sure who. The deal follows the announcement of the $77 billion CVS Health/Aetna (NYSE: CVS/AET) deal and the $4.9 billion Optum/DaVita Medical Group (NYSE: UNH/DVA) hook-up in December 2017. That’s when the word “disruption” became the top-ranked meme in U.S. healthcare. We’ll grant that CVS’s move into managed care signals a change in business-as-usual. But Optum’s deal for DaVita’s medical group didn’t break new ground. Optum has long been known as a voracious acquirer of physician... Read More »