June 16--Minnetonka's UnitedHealth Group, the largest public company in the state, declined Tuesday to address acquisition rumors that sent the company's stock up 2 percent in midday trading.

Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that Minnesota's for-profit insurance giant has recently made a preliminary takeover offer for insurance rival Aetna.

The deal would likely have a value of at least $42 billion; one financial model published Tuesday morning put the price closer to $64 billion.

The report appears to fit with the overall mood in the for-profit insurance sector, which stock analysts say is ripe for a spate of mergers. Bigger insurers are seen as having more ability to meaningfully grow earnings amid growing pressures on managed care companies from regulators and hospitals.

"For the first half of 2015, the story with the (managed-care) stocks has been about rising anticipation of large-scale M & A," or mergers and acquisitions, analysts with Deutsche Bank Securities wrote in a note to investors Tuesday morning. "[Monday's] fusillade of media headlines suggest that all of the industry leaders are fully mobilizing their financial arsenals for the developing consolidation showdown."

Analysts at Oppenheimer & Co., in an investor note Monday headlined "Consolidation Reports Continue to Swirl" noted the latest speculation follows news in Bloomberg and elsewhere that insurer Anthem may be considering bids to buy rivals Cigna and/or Humana. the Wall Street Journal also reported Monday that UnitedHealth may be interested in Cigna.

UnitedHealth, Aetna, Anthem, Cigna and Humana are five of the largest for-profit health insurers in the country by revenue.

"These reports are a continuation of the recent consolidation theme in the managed-care industry," the Oppenheimer note said.

UnitedHealth spokesman Mason Tyler said via e-mail: "We are not commenting on rumors or speculation."

UnitedHealth was trading around $121.50 per share, up 2.1 percent on the morning.

In theory, the Affordable Care Act should have been a boon to insurers by mandating that nearly all Americans carry health insurance. But the complex law also applied financial pressure by setting strict rules for how much of members' premiums insurers can keep as profits, removing insurers' ability to reject members for pre-existing health conditions, and exposing rate increases to public scrutiny. Hospitals have also grown larger in mergers of their own, giving them more bargaining power to negotiate rates with payers.

In response, insurers have been trying to figure out how to diversify their operations while also growing their scale to weather the storm.

"As we have been discussing, industry consolidation will remain a key topic, as the largest plans take advantage of the cheap cost of capital and attractive synergies from potential acquisitions," Oppenheimer analysts wrote.

How the trend will affect UnitedHealth is unclear.

In March, UnitedHealth announced it was beefing up its business line for managing large prescription-drug insurance plans -- a business called "pharmacy benefit management," or PBM -- with a $12.8 billion cash offer to acquire the nation's fourth largest PBM company, Catamaran. The deal has not yet been approved by regulators, but it would make UnitedHealth the largest company in Minnesota.

Stock analysts said the Catamaran deal could complicate other mergers and acquisitions for UnitedHealth.

Deutsch Bank said that of the seven possible insurance-industry acquisitions in rumor stages today, the UnitedHealth-Aenta tie-up comes in third in terms of how it could improve profitability.

For 2016, the analysts project that UnitedHealth would post operating earnings per share of $7.30 in 2016 on its own, or $7.74 per share if it combines with Aetna. Its total revenue would change from a projected $181 billion in 2016 as a stand-alone company to $247 billion that year as a combined entity.

Twitter: @_JoeCarlson

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(c)2015 the Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

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2026 OCT 21 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx journalists, a trademark application has been made for “PEACE OF MIND, FOREVER” by Charles T.J. Weigell Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, P.C., representing Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company. This application was made available to the public on October 02, 2026.

The serial number for this application is 88322301.

The international trademark goods and services class code for this trademark application is 036.

As submitted by the applicant, this trademark application relates to the following goods and services: Acceptance of deposits in the nature of check acceptance services; substitute bond issuance in the nature of financial investment services, namely, issuance of bonds; acceptance of fixed interval installment deposits in the nature of banking services; loan financing; loans in the nature of discount of bills; domestic exchange settlement, namely, monetary exchange; liability guarantee and acceptance of bills, namely, financial guarantee and surety; securities lending; acquisition and transfer of monetary claims; safekeeping of valuables including securities and precious metals, namely, safe deposit box services; monetary exchange; trusteeship representative services for financial futures contracts; trusteeship representative services for money, securities, monetary claims, personal property, land, rights on land fixtures, surface rights and lease on land; agencies for bond subscriptions; foreign exchange transactions; issuing of letters of credit; brokerage of credit purchase; issuance of tokens of value; agencies for collecting gas or electric power utility payments; consigned collection of payment for goods, namely, debt collection agency services; buying and selling of securities, namely, security brokerage and trading in securities; trading of securities index futures; trading of securities options; trading of overseas market securities futures; agencies for brokerage of securities, securities index futures, securities options, and overseas market securities futures; agencies for brokerage of entrusting agents with oncommission trading in domestic markets of securities, securities index futures and securities options; agencies for brokerage of entrusting agents with oncommossion trading in overseas markets of securities and securities index futures; agencies for brokerage of forward agreement of securities, for forward agreement of securities index futures, for forward agreement of securities options, spot and forward transaction of securities index futures; brokerage for securities liquidation; securities underwriting; securities offering; brokerage services relating to securities subscription or offering; providing stock market information; agencies for trading of commodity futures; life insurance brokerage; life insurance underwriting; agency for non-life insurance; claim adjustment for non-life insurance; non-life insurance underwriting; insurance premium rate computing; consultancy and information services relating to insurance; insurance services, namely, insurance agency and brokerage; insurance administration services; management of buildings; agency services for the leasing or rental of buildings; leasing or renting of buildings; purchasing and selling buildings, namely, real estate acquisition services; agency services for the purchase and sale of buildings, namely, real estate acquisition services; real estate appraisal; providing information on the sale or lease of buildings or land; land management in the nature of real estate services, namely, property management for land; agency services for the leasing or rental of land; leasing of land; purchase and sale of land, namely, real estate acquisition services; agency services for the purchase and sales of land, namely, real estate acquisition services; financial assessment of company credit in the nature of financial risk assessment services; charitable fund raising; antique appraisal; art appraisal; precious stone appraisal; used automobiles appraisal; rental of paper money and coin counting or processing machines; rental of cash dispensers; rental of automated-teller machines.

The registrar information for this application is: Charles T.J. Weigell Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, P.C., 151 W. 42nd Street, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10036, UNITED STATES.

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