HHGregg strategy shift vaults stock to 52-week high
The Indianapolis-based appliance and electronics retailer’s stock hit a sort of milestone Tuesday, closing above $18 for the first time since early 2011.
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Lilly cites ‘deep concerns’ over China kickback allegations
Eli Lilly and Co. said it is investigating allegations its employees paid Chinese doctors at least $4.9 million in bribes and kickbacks to promote the sales of two diabetes drugs.
A&E SEASON PREVIEW: Lou Harry’s critically selected highlights
I’m happily overwhelmed by the number of events I anticipate attending and reviewing during the coming arts season. Take a look.
WESTERHAUS-RENFROW: The insidiousness of income segregation
As a child, racial segregation was a fact of my life, whether by law or by custom. In the South, barriers between whites and blacks were rigidly codified by statute before the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s.
TAFT: Redouble fight against urban poverty
Brookings Institute researchers recently published a book called “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” that profiles how quickly poverty is migrating from many urban centers to their surrounding suburbs. Metro-area poverty has grown fastest in the suburbs over the past 30 years—experiencing a 64-percent increase versus 29-percent growth in urban centers.
KETZENBERGER: We’re more resourceful than we realize
A realization struck recently as I was sitting in the shade of an umbrella stuck into the white sand that rims Thunder Bay in northeast Michigan, a copy of “The Last Policeman” across my lap.
United plans direct flights between San Francisco, Indianapolis
The daily flights, which are expected to begin on Jan. 7, will fulfill a longtime wish of local tech firms eager for more direct access to the West Coast and Silicon Valley.
Salesforce’s bet on ExactTarget starts to pay off
The $2.5 billion purchase of ExactTarget will add $140 million to $145 million in revenue this year for Salesforce.com, the firm said Thursday. Its shares soared 13 percent in Friday morning trading.
Company news
The assets of Greenwood former drugmaker Elona Biotechnologies Inc. will be liquidated at an auction Sept. 27. Elona, which was trying to make a generic version of insulin known as a biosimilar, was put into receivership in June after the city of Greenwood filed a foreclosure action to recover more than $9.5 million in loans and incentives. Bernadette Barron, the Chicago-based receiver for Elona, hired Indianapolis-based Key Auctioneers Inc. to liquidate Elona’s assets. Those assets include an unfinished, $28 million headquarters and manufacturing facility, as well as patents and other intellectual property. Elona was founded in 1997 by two former Eli Lilly and Co. scientists. If launched, Elona’s insulin would have been a cheaper competitor to brand-name insulins made by Indianapolis-based Lilly and other companies. There are no generic versions of insulin sold around the world. Elona was seen as a rising star, and Gov. Mike Pence even visited the company in March 2012 as part of his “jobs tour,” which was a key element of his gubernatorial campaign.
On Thursday, Greenfield Mayor Richard Pasco and officials from Hancock Regional Hospital will break ground on the O3 PureMed medical waste facility. O3 PureMed is the first commercial facility in the region to dispose of medical waste using an ozone-based green technology. The facility is a partnership of Hancock Regional and Greenfield-based waste management firm Fisk Services.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. looked south for its latest partnership, a deal with Louisville-based health insurer Humana Inc. to conduct research to improve the health care of their members and patients. The companies will work together to identify and analyze data to improve health care quality and outcomes. The initial project will investigate the characteristics of Type 2 diabetes patients associated with increased health care costs. The companies might then study treatments that could change some of those characteristics. "We are pleased to partner with Humana on research that will help benefit patients facing a variety of diseases, including diabetes," said Dr. Dara Schuster, a medical fellow at Lilly. "Working together, we hope to provide patients with insights and guidance that will help them tailor their care to best match their individual needs."
Ouch! Indy hospitals charging employers three times more than Medicare
A new study found that Indianapolis-area hospitals are charging patients insured by their employers 264 percent more for outpatient services than the federal Medicare program pays for the exact same services at the same hospitals.
Analysis: Obamacare exchanges will push Anthem’s premiums lower
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana expects the average premiums it charges on the health insurance exchanges being created by Obamacare to be about $60 per year less for each of its health plan members than they would have been without the law.
Company news
Indianapolis-based Harlan Laboratories may violate loan covenants in the next three to six months, and its ability to refinance a $280 million loan that matures in July 2014 is “highly questionable,” according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service. It’s unclear if the privately held company has an escape plan brewing. Harlan Laboratories employs about 330 people in the area and has annual sales of $326 million. The company appeared on the verge of pulling off a $305 million refinancing in February, but the deal fell apart and was shelved in April, according to Standard & Poor’s Ratings Corp. The ratings agencies say the company is not performing well enough to attract lenders. And even if it could engineer a refinancing, it likely would struggle to make the required payments. By Moody’s tally, Harlan’s “adjusted debt” is a whopping 7-1/2 times its so-called EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).
Indianapolis-area hospitals are billing patients insured by their employers 264 percent more for outpatient services than what the federal Medicare program would pay for the same services for the same patients in the same facilities. That’s what researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Studying Health System Change found when they analyzed claims data for 590,000 patients, all below the age of 65, who were covered in 2011 by the union-negotiated health plans at automakers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The study was paid for by an organization that is funded by the automakers, the UAW and the International Union. The study compared the claims from 13 metro areas against one anther, all of them in the Midwest. Indianapolis had the highest hospital outpatient prices among all cities and the second-highest inpatient prices, behind only Kansas City. Interestingly, Kokomo had the third-highest inpatient prices and the second-highest outpatient prices. Physician prices in Indianapolis were in the middle of the pack, about 10 percent to 20 percent higher than Medicare prices. The authors of the study say hospitals’ market power, which has increased in recent years due to consolidation among hospitals and doctors, is the most likely explanation for the higher prices.
New Jersey-based Covance Inc. has formed a collaboration with the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute to conduct early-stage clinical trials for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The Indiana CTSI, which was formed by partnership of Indiana, Purdue and Notre Dame universities, will provide access to a 13,606-square-foot, 24-patient facility at IU Health University Hospital in Indianapolis. The institute also could, if needed, expand operations into a recently renovated 33,078-square-foot, 50-patient facility in the same building. This space reopens to clinical research for the first time in six years due to the efforts of the Indiana CTSI. The alliance between Covance and the Indiana CTSI was facilitated by BioCrossroads, an Indianapolis-based life sciences business development group. Covance already conducts Phase 1 clinical trials at an 80-bed facility in Evansville. But there has been a paucity of Phase 1 clinical trial work in Indianapolis since locally based drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. shut down its clinic at the IU School of Medicine in 2007.
Two troubled downtown office buildings turn tenants’ heads
The Landmark Center at 1099 N. Meridian St. and the historic Century Building at 36 S. Pennsylvania St. (pictured) are both in receivership but attracting interest from potential buyers and tenants.
The brain drain in Indiana is a myth
An IBJ analysis of surveys of the nation’s college seniors shows Indiana has less of a brain drain than most other states. Instead, what ails Indiana is the lack of a “brain gain” of educated adults.
Too few jobs in Indiana for science, tech graduates
Indiana’s problem with brain drain is that its business community is too weak to offer enough jobs or high enough pay to keep graduates with the best money-making potential—those with degrees in science, technology, engineering, math and business.
IU Health to lay off 800 employees
The Indianapolis-based hospital system said Thursday it must make the cuts because fewer patients have been coming to hospitals and payment rates for its services have been declining.
EDITORIAL: Quality of life takes center stage
Few would argue with the assertion that the Indianapolis area is a good place to do business. Taxes are low, regulations are generally reasonable and the cost of living is low.
LOU’S VIEWS: Civic Theatre’s ‘Pippin’ lacks magic
Exceptional production values stand out from rest of an unfocused production. Fun added by brief 3D sequence.
Company news
By year end, the St. Vincent Health hospital system will spin off its New Hope organization for Hoosiers with development disabilities. St. Vincent New Hope will become a stand-alone organization that will continue to run group homes for its patients. New Hope started offering counseling, day programs and residential housing in 1978. About a decade later, St. Vincent joined forces with New Hope. St. Vincent Health will make a cash infusion to New Hope and also donate to New Hope more than 38 central Indiana group home properties. Jim Van Dyke, executive director of St.Vincent New Hope, said in a prepared statement, “This new phase in our history will allow us to implement even stronger programs that will enable New Hope to continue serving our clients well into the future.”
Major health insurers, including WellPoint Inc., are in line for another year of growth, thanks to Obamacare, according to Bloomberg News. Bloomberg cited Barclays Capital analyst Joshua Raskin, who in a research note late last week said the Medicaid expansion funded by Obamacare should help drive enrollment growth next year, and the health insurance exchanges in each state will wind up being a "very small" influence. WellPoint shares rose 57 cents Monday morning to $89.66 each.
Admissions at Indiana University Health hospitals in the first half of the year dipped 4.3 percent, prompting IU Health executives to give pink slips to about 800 employees, according to an announcement Thursday morning. Meanwhile, however, IU Health's business is stronger than ever, with income from operations shooting up nearly 20 percent in the first half of the year.IU Health currently has 36,000 employees, although many of them work part time. Its full-time-equivalent work force totals 27,000. For all of 2012, IU Health had revenue of $5.6 billion. IU Health’s decision comes less than three months after Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Health laid off 865 workers in late June, which was part of a 5,000-worker layoff by its parent organization, St. Louis-based Ascension Health Alliance. IU Health CEO Dan Evans said in an April interview that the hospital system is trying to cut $1 billion in expenses by 2017. So far, IU Health has been able to offset its decline in hospital admissions with an 8-percent price increase and by receiving more patient visits to its outpatient facilities. Excluding one-time items, IU Health income from operations rose 19 percent in the first half of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012. IU Health pulled in $186.3 million during those six months, compared with $156.6 million the year before. Inpatient admissions—those involving an overnight stay—had been climbing consistently throughout 2012. But then, in January, they started to fall.
Indiana University is cutting about 50 hourly workers at its Bloomington campus and shifting that work to a temporary staffing agency. Spokesman Mark Land said the move was in the works, but was accelerated so IU could avoid having to add those workers to the IU health insurance plan as required by the federal health care overhaul if they average more than 30 hours a week. Land told The Herald-Times that shifting 50 of the physical plant department's 650 jobs will also relieve the administrative task of managing the hours of seasonal workers. IU will have the Manpower agency hire the maintenance and custodial personnel after Sept. 28. The university will pay the agency an administrative fee to manage the workers.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. sued Canada last week, seeking $500 million in damages because the drugmaker thinks Canada’s courts violated the North American Free Trade Agreement by invalidating patents on two Lilly drugs. According to CBC News, Lilly had sought relief from Canada through arbitration, but will now take its complaint before a three-member tribunal. Lilly is suing because Canadian courts struck down some of its patents on its former bestseller Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medication, and on Strattera, a medicine to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Lilly says the court rulings, issues from 2009 to 2011, cost Lilly hundreds of millions in sales because they allowed cheaper generic versions of the drugs to undercut Lilly’s brand-name products sooner than would have otherwise occurred. "Patent decisions in Canada over the last decade not only fly in the face of long-established international standards, but they're subjective and completely unpredictable," Doug Norman, general patent counsel for Eli Lilly, said in a prepared statement.
Indy corporate leaders eye nutrition initiative
The group that oversees Indiana’s economic development initiatives for life sciences, information technology, transportation and clean technology is moving toward a fifth thrust focused on nutrition.