BUSINESSCalifornia insurer WellPoint boosts bid to seal merger with Georgia BluesThe West Coast network sweetened its merger offer by $200 million after another insurer made an unsolicited bid for the Georgia plan.By Julie A. Jacob, amednews staff. Jan. 1/8, 2001. Cerulean Companies Inc., the holding company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, will net an additional $200 million in a revised merger deal with WellPoint Health Networks Inc. -- thanks to a last-minute bid by a rival Blue Cross Blue Shield plan. Cerulean on Nov. 29, 2000, accepted a $700 million cash merger offer from Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based WellPoint. WellPoint, which provides health insurance to 7.5 million members across the country, does business as Blue Cross of California in that state and as Unicare in other states. The Cerulean deal, which still requires a passing vote from Cerulean shareholders and approval from the Georgia Dept. of Insurance, would add 1.8 million members to WellPoint's membership. WellPoint originally offered $500 million for Cerulean in 1998. That offer, however, was held up for two years until a settlement of a class action lawsuit filed by some Georgia Blues shareholders was reached in October 2000. The shareholders contended that they should have received stock shares when the Georgia Blues converted to a for-profit insurer in 1996. Only a month after that merger roadblock was settled, Trigon Healthcare Inc., the Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee in Richmond, Va., made an unsolicited $675 million bid for Cerulean. Representatives of for-profit Trigon have publicly stated that the company, like other Blues plans across the country, is interested in expanding into a regional insurer.
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