Anthem (ANTM) CEO Swedish Discusses Lawsuit Against the DOJ on CNBC

CEO of Anthem (ANTM), Joseph Swedish, joined CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Tuesday morning to comment on the company's lawsuit against The United States Department of Justice.
By Giovanni Bruno ,

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Last week U.S. Department of Justice filed lawsuits against a proposed acquisition by Anthem (ANTM) - Get Report to acquire Cigna (CI), effectively blocking the deal. Now Anthem has begun the process of bringing its own lawsuit against the DOJ in order to allow the acquisition to go through.

The DOJ blocked the acquisition citing "the reduction [in] the competition in the market would leave consumers vulnerable by reducing benefits and raising premiums."

Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish joined CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Tuesday morning to discuss the lawsuit against the DOJ.

"We are very disappointed with the decision, we believe it blocks consumers to affordable health care that's high quality and gives great opportunity to the American public to take advantage of a combination of two great companies," Swedish said.

"We have such strong faith in the facts," Swedish repeated throughout the interview. 

"We were bringing two billion in medical cost savings to the consumer's pockets, we proposed that we would access nine additional states with respects to access to the public exchanges, thereby bringing in as many as one million uninsured members into the public exchange marketplace," Swedish explained.

Relaying that those are only two of the many facts he intends to argue during litigation, and ultimately will lead him to prevail.

Swedish addressed critics who are saying Anthem and Cigna may no longer be on the same page after the DOJ moved to block the deal. 

"We took that proposal to the boards, both boards approved the combination, and finally took it to the shareholders and got virtual unanimous approval. There's nothing that has lead us to believe that they want to leave this deal," Swedish said.

Swedish anticipates a four-month trial that he is hoping will begin in short order and end quickly. 

Shares of Anthem are lower by 0.65% to $139.07 on Tuesday morning.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings rates Anthem as a "Buy" with a ratings score of "B+." This is driven by a few notable strengths, which TheStreet Ratings believes should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks TheStreet Ratings covers.

The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and attractive valuation levels. TheStreet Ratings feels its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.

TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: ANTM

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