(Bloomberg) -- Centene Corp. agreed to buy Health Net Inc. for about $6.3 billion in cash and stock, creating a combination of two smaller U.S. health insurers ahead of an expected round of mergers among the industry’s giants.
Health Net investors will get 0.622 shares of Centene and $28.25 in cash for each share they hold, the companies said in a statement on Thursday. The implied price of $78.57 a share is 21 percent more than Health Net’s closing stock price Wednesday.
The deal gives Centene the biggest market share among private administrators of Medicaid, the federally funded health program for the poor -- a bet that the U.S. government will keep playing a larger role in health care.
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
