Growth pushes Bluelock into black
The growing popularity of cloud computing is sending sales skyward for Bluelock, a 6-year-old firm that is turning a profit and garnering national attention.
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Zionsville might pass on full-day kindergarten funds
Superintendent Scott Robison informally recommended in March that the school system take a pass on the new funding because it still does not fully cover the costs required to expand its kindergarten program from half days to full days.
MAURER: Take her husband, please
Congratulations to Gov. Mitch Daniels on the appointment of Mike Alley as commissioner of the Indiana Department of Revenue. Alley will restore the state agency’s credibility.
Greencastle portrayal false
Jake Bonifield’s [April 16] Forefront column is so factually deficient that our organization feels that a response is necessary.
Better results from vouchers
Morton Marcus [April 16 Forefront] takes a cautious approach in order to create some controversy and energy in the voucher discussion.
Lilly tops analyst expectations despite shrinking profit, revenue
Lilly’s quarterly sales and profit fell due to lost patent protection on Gemzar and Zyprexa. But sales of antidepressant Cymbalta, blood thinner Effient, animal health products and sales in China grew by 20 percent or more.
IU Health to give $75 million to IU medical researchers
Indiana University Health announced Tuesday that it will give $75 million in additional funding over the next five years to ramp up research at the Indiana University School of Medicine and launch more clinical trials around the state.
IU doc group becomes Eskenazi Medical
A group of 123 doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have formed the Eskenazi Medical Group in order to focus on maximizing patient care and related bonus payments at Wishard Health Services.
Trend lines look good for WellPoint
More people have jobs and yet the use of health care remains stagnant—which should drive nice profits when WellPoint Inc. reports first-quarter earnings on Wednesday. The trends even have some wondering if consumer-driven health plans are finally starting to make a real difference in Americans’ health care spending habits.
Company news
Purdue University plans to start construction this summer on two academic buildings in a $79 million project for its newly designated Life and Health Sciences Park, according to the Journal & Courier of Lafayette. The $38 million Lyles-Porter Hall will house health programs, including Purdue's speech and hearing sciences department and the West Lafayette programs of the Indiana University School of Medicine. Purdue also is planning a $25 million Drug Discovery Building that will bring together pharmaceutical researchers from throughout the school. Plans are for the buildings and a new 850-space parking garage to be completed in 2014.
More than 70 workers will lose their jobs at Integra Specialty Hospital in Muncie when it closes in June. Hospital officials notified the Indiana Department of Workforce Development on Thursday that the 32-bed long-term-care facility will shut down on June 17. Renaissance Specialty Hospital of Central Indiana Operations Co. LLC, which operates Integra, did not provide a reason for the closing. The company said it expects that some of the 72 employees will be offered the opportunity to transfer to other long-term-care facilities.
Eli Lilly and Co. could receive up to $100 million from Washington, D.C.,-based Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., which licensed an alcohol-dependence drug from the Indianapolis drugmaker last week. The experimental drug, called LY686017, has been shown to reduce alcohol cravings and consumption in alcoholics. If it reaches the market, the drug would compete with Emend, a similar NK-1R antagonist made by New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc.
The government-contracting arm of WellPoint Inc. won a renewal of its contract, worth more than $111 million, to support the desktop program used by customer service representatives at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for the next five years. WellPoint’s National Government Services unit has held the contract since the program’s inception. The program helped Medicare’s call center field 26 million calls last year. NGS, which employs 2,000, also processed 170 million Medicare claims and administered benefits of $75.6 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund in 2011.
An animal rights group wants the federal government to fine a research institute owned by Indiana University Health for what it calls negligence toward animals, according to the Associated Press. The group Stop Animal Exploitation Now says IU Health's Methodist Research Institute had seven violations, including killing one dog and putting another dog in severe pain. According to a March report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a dog was fed before surgery, which violated proper protocol. The dog’s heart stopped, and it died. IU Health officials said in a statement that the use of animals in research has contributed significantly to advancements in health care.
Airport wants more nonstop flights
Its focus will include trying to attract flights from Indianapolis International to San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle.
Business can train workers
The [April 2] article “Manufacturers prowling for skilled workers” highlighting the lack of trained workers for advanced manufacturing jobs underscores a critical need in Indiana—and throughout the nation.
Angel Learning’s founder thinking big again
IT professor Ali Jafari, who netted Indiana University $23 million on its $130,000 investment in his Angel Learning when it sold three years ago, recently launched CourseNetworking, which allows learners across the globe to connect and chat around shared interests and class subjects.
WellPoint enrolls IBM supercomputer at IU medical school
IBM’s supercomputer Watson is already a “Jeopardy!” champion. Now, three doctors in Indianapolis are trying to teach it how to treat cancer.
Are corporate gift policies inhospitable?
Sober times have made no-no’s of many of the perks that once greased business relationships.
Company news
Shares of Endocyte Inc. more than doubled in value Monday morning after the company unveiled an up to $1 billion deal with Merck & Co. Inc. to bring an ovarian cancer drug to market. West Lafayette-based Endocyte’s stock had fallen 60 percent in the past 12 months. New Jersey-based Merck will pay Endocyte $120 million upfront with as much as $880 million in future payments possible based on regulatory approvals and sales of the drug EC145, also known as vitafolide. The agreement gives Merck worldwide commercial rights to EC145, in exchange for double-digit royalty payments to Endocyte. The two companies will split sales revenue and marketing costs in the United States. Endocyte already has begun studying EC145 as a potential lung cancer treatment, and intends to study it in still more applications. Merck also gained the rights to the drug for those other types of cancer. Chris Raymond, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., called the agreement “an amazing deal” for Endocyte.
Shareholders of Eli Lilly and Co. failed once gain to remove the drugmaker’s tough poison-pill provision against unwanted buyers. The proposal garnered 62.4 percent of the shares voted at Monday’s annual meeting of shareholders, according to preliminary voting results. To pass, the proposal needed support from the owners of 80 percent of Lilly’s shares. That means Lilly’s corporate bylaws still contain an 80-percent approval threshold for hostile takeover bids, even though the company’s board has recommended removing the policy in each of the past three years. The proposal that failed Monday would have required just a bare majority of shareholder votes to approve key moves commonly used in hostile takeovers. In the past two years, the same proposal received 74 percent and 73 percent of all shares, respectively. The supermajority vote requirement dates from the 1980s, the heyday of “corporate raiders” making unsolicited bids to buy public companies. Lilly’s board, which has been fiercely independent during multiple waves of consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry, finally began to support removing the high threshold in 2010. That decision followed three straight years in which a majority of Lilly shareholders expressed support for removing the supermajority voting requirements.
Roche Diagnostics Corp.’s North American sales rose 7 percent in the first quarter, to 615 million Swiss francs, or about $670 million in U.S. dollars, assuming constant exchange rates across the world. The Swiss company’s North American headquarters is in Indianapolis, along with a significant diabetes manufacturing operation. Diabetes sales in North America shrank in the quarter 5 percent, to 119 million Swiss francs, or $130 million. Roche’s sales of lab and testing equipment, and the equipment and chemicals that go with it, all saw double-digit growth in the quarter. Worldwide, Roche’s diagnostic sales grew 4 percent, in constant currencies, to $2.4 billion Swiss francs, or $2.6 billion.
Bloomington-based medical-device maker Cook Group acquired General BioTechnology LLC, an Indianapolis biotech company with about 20 employees. Terms of the deal were not announced. Cook will rename the company Cook General BioTechnology LLC. General BioTechnology was founded in 1997 by former Indiana University School of Medicine researchers. It operates an umbilical-cord blood and tissue bank for families called The Genesis Bank and a reproductive tissue bank called Genome Resources.
Biomet Inc.’s sales rose 5 percent in the three months ended Feb. 29, to nearly $709 million, compared with the same period a year ago. The growth was driven by increased volumes in North America and the Pacific Rim. The Warsaw-based orthopedic-implant maker’s financial results are always closely watched as an early signal for the rest of the industry, which will report first-quarter results later this month. Biomet’s sales of knee implants rose 4 percent and sales of its hip implants rose 6 percent, compared with the same quarter last year. The company’s operating income rose 14 percent, to $108.1 million, primarily due to lower amortization expenses recorded from the company’s 2007 buyout by private equity firms. Biomet has a whopping $5.3 billion in debt, which required interest payments in the quarter of $117 million. That expense and tax payments led Biomet to a loss for the quarter of $16.5 million, up from $11.6 million a year ago.
Poison pills remain as Lilly shareholder vote falls short
The proposal garnered support from the owners of 62 percent of Eli Lilly’s outstanding shares. To pass, the proposal needed approval from the owners of 80 percent of Lilly’s shares.
Is health care bubble about to burst?
Citigroup economist writes that U.S. health care sector "reminds us somewhat ominously of the bubble in housing finance" because public spending is fueling private profits.
WISH turns Mini Marathon into made-for-TV drama
About 65,000 central Indiana households representing more than 115,000 viewers are expected to tune in to the 3-1/2-hour WISH-TV Channel 8 broadcast of the nation’s largest half marathon.