CVS Corp. said Thursday that its merger with pharmacy benefits manager Caremark Rx, a deal worth roughly $24 billion, has been formally closed.
The new company, called CVS/Caremark Corp., will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CVS.
Tom Ryan, CVS/Caremark’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement that the “landmark merger…will offer end-to-end services, from plan design to prescription fulfillment, as well as the opportunity to improve clinical outcomes, which will result in better control over health care costs for employers and plan providers.”
The closure comes after months of heated bidding for Caremark by rivals CVS and Express Scripts Inc., another pharmacy benefits manager.
CVS and Caremark announced their plan to merge in November, a deal that, at the time, was valued at about $21 billion. A month later, Express Scripts made a significantly higher hostile bid for Caremark that was valued at $26 billion.
In January, however, Caremark’s board rejected the Express Scripts offer, citing “insurmountable antitrust risks” of the merger of two pharmacy benefits managers. Caremark affirmed its “strong commitment” to the CVS merger, noting that a combined CVS/Caremark would have 21,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners, along with Caremark’s 2,000 health plan sponsors and their participants.
The deal cleared a major hurdle late last week, when shareholders of both CVS and Caremark approved the merger.
The CVS deal pairs a top drugstore chain with a business based largely on prescription benefit management and home delivery.
U.S. drugstore chains have been pressured by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which announced last year it would lower its prices for a 30-day supply of selected generic prescriptions to $4. An upside of the CVS/Caremark deal, Caremark said in a statement in January, would be “increased generic substitution rates.”
CVS/Caremark said Thursday that it plans to make a cash offer in about five business days for 150 million, or about 10 percent, of its outstanding shares at a price of $35 a share.
CVS shares fell 1 percent to end trading Thursday at $34.31, while Caremark’s stock was discontinued.