Risk and regulation
MBIA Inc. and other bond insurers have settled a 2008 lawsuit filed by the city of Los Angeles claiming violation of California's antitrust laws.
Atlas Financial Holdings Inc., CEO Scott Wollney and CFO Paul Romano Jr. are facing a class-action complaint after the company announced that it strengthened its reserves.
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones issued a cease and desist order against Access Insurance Co. after it reported policyholder surplus deficiencies in its income statements.
HCC Life Insurance Co. is nearing a $5 million settlement with state regulators following an investigation into the company's sales of short-term health insurance plans, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma warned a key Idaho insurance regulator that she would enforce the Affordable Care Act if he allows the sale of health plans that skirt ACA rules.
Property and casualty
France-based AXA will acquire XL Group Ltd, a global property and casualty commercial lines insurer and reinsurer, for a total cash consideration of $15.3 billion. The need for scale to compete in today's global insurance market helped persuade XL Group to sell to AXA, XL CEO Mike McGavick said. AXA CEO Thomas Buberl faced a barrage of questions from analysts after the XL Group deal announcement sent shares crashing by 9.7% on March 5.
The U.S. property and casualty industry's net underwriting loss, as expected, grew exponentially in 2017 as insurers confronted the most active North Atlantic hurricane season in more than a decade and unprecedented autumn wildfires in California.
American International Group Inc.'s top executive approached Validus Holdings Ltd. about a possible tie-up in late 2017, and the companies took just over two months to formally sign a $5.56 billion deal, according to a regulatory filing.
Life and health
Centene Corp. has agreed to acquire Community Medical Holdings Corp., which does business as Community Medical Group. The group serves over 70,000 Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and health insurance marketplace program patients in Miami-Dade County, Fla.
CVS Health Corp. launched an offering of certain securities of varying maturity dates for an aggregate purchase price of $40 billion, which the retail pharmacy chain will use to partially fund its purchase of Aetna Inc.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. has joined the race to acquire the ambulatory services unit of Envision Healthcare Corp., Bloomberg News reported, citing "people familiar with the matter."
Life insurers are again in the market for pension risk transfer, or PRT, deals in 2018 after the industry saw a 68% jump in single premium buyout product sales in 2017.
Confirming a report, Cigna Corp. has agreed to acquire pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Co. in a deal valued at approximately $67 billion, including Cigna's assumption of approximately $15 billion in Express Scripts' debt. With Cigna's $67 billion purchase of Express Scripts, the last large, stand-alone pharmacy-benefit manager and its roughly 100 million customers will be absorbed by a major health insurer. The need to create a "more sustainable healthcare system" was one of the key drivers that led Cigna to agree to combine with Express Scripts, according to Cigna President and CEO David Cordani. Healthcare industry participants and analysts were mostly unsurprised by the deal between Cigna and Express Scripts as the space moves toward consolidating drug middlemen with managed care organizations.
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