Nonprofit insurer Premera Blue Cross will find out March 15 whether it will be allowed to convert to a for-profit public company. A Thurston County Superior Court judge formalized an agreement between Premera and state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler setting a date for the decision. The timetable for reviewing Premera’s conversion plan has been a contentious issue for months. The company first filed its application for conversion a year ago. Based in Mountlake Terrace, Premera provides health insurance and related services to 1.2 million people in Washington and Alaska as a nonprofit licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
The New York Stock Exchange board named a search committee to find its next leader and discussed ways to reform itself Friday, as it began to navigate its way following the exit of Dick Grasso. In its first order of business since forcing its chairman and chief executive to resign over a pay scandal, the board named Laurence Fink, CEO of investment group BlackRock Inc., to lead a committee to find Grasso’s replacement.
Christopher Galvin resigned Friday as chairman and chief executive of struggling Motorola Inc., ending an often rocky six years at the helm of the telecommunications giant that his grandfather founded 75 years ago. Galvin, 53, cited differences with the board over the progress of the stalled turnaround at the world’s No. 2 cell-phone manufacturer, which also is a top semiconductor maker.
Boeing Co. is urging the unprecedented cooperation of rival U.S. defense contractors to establish a single communication standard that would allow future weapons systems built for the U.S. military to talk to each other. Boeing executives have invited Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, as well as software companies Microsoft and smaller suppliers to a meeting to discuss a standards body that would eliminate competing technologies used in radios and data networks on planes, ships and other weapons platforms.
Shares of Blockbuster Inc. jumped Friday after a report that the video-rental giant is in the early stages of talks about a possible merger with Columbia House, the mail-order music and movie retailer. The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the idea of a merger emerged in recent weeks.
Herald staff and wire reports
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