CVS Closes $70 Billion Aetna Deal

(Bloomberg) -- CVS Health Corp. has closed its $70 billion deal to buy health insurer Aetna Inc., ending months of reviews by state and federal regulators.

The companies announced the takeover almost a year ago in December 2017, promising to create an integrated health-care company whose pharmacy locations could be hubs for medical services while better managing patients.

Key Insights

• The goals of the deal -- better-managed care, new points of access to the medical system, healthier communities -- are extremely ambitious. Now the companies have to prove that they can actually achieve them in what’s likely to be an extremely complex merger.
• CVS said it will quickly start rolling out of products to do that: managing patients with chronic diseases, more services at in-store clinics, screenings, and offerings like nutrition counseling and digital health apps.
• If it works, the deal is likely to have long-term effects around the rest of health care, forcing investors and executives to ask whether companies that offer administrative services, distribution or act as middlemen should be independent.

Know More

• Aetna shareholders will get $145 in cash and 0.8378 shares of CVS stock in the deal, making it worth about $212 a share. Including debt, the transaction is valued at about $78 billion, CVS said.
• Read the statement from CVS here.

To contact the reporters on this story: Drew Armstrong in New York at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net;Robert Langreth in New York at rlangreth@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Drew Armstrong at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net, Timothy Annett

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