ReportWire

Tag: business and commercial law

  • Bankrupt Steward to sell hospitals

    Bankrupt Steward to sell hospitals

    [ad_1]

    BOSTON — Bankrupt Steward Health Care System said it plans to sell all its hospitals — including eight in Massachusetts — to help pay off $9 billion in outstanding liabilities.

    The privately owned health care group is preparing to put its 31 U.S. hospitals up for sale as early as next month and hopes to finalize transactions by the end of the summer, the company’s attorneys said at a Tuesday hearing in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Texas.

    Steward, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, plans to keep all of its hospitals open over the long term, attorney Ray Schrock told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Chris Lopez, who is overseeing the company’s Chapter 11 proceedings.

    “Our goal remains that there are zero hospitals closed on our watch,” Schrock said. “There’s going to be a change in ownership in many hospitals, we recognize that. But we don’t want to see any of these communities fail to be served.”

    In court filings, Steward disclosed that it has $9 billion in liabilities, including $1.2 billion in loans, $6.6 billion in rent obligations, $1 billion owed to medical vendors and suppliers, and $290 million in unpaid employee wages and benefits.

    The company plans to hold auctions on June 28 for its hospitals outside of Florida, according to court filings. The deadline was negotiated as part of a $75 million bankruptcy loan, but Schrock said Steward may seek more time to sell its hospitals if necessary.

    “What we don’t want to do is have a fire sale of the assets,” Schrock told the judge, according to published reports. “There is a lot of value here.”

    Steward, the largest private for-profit hospital chain in the country, operates 31 hospitals across eight states — including Holy Family Hospital in Methuen and Haverhill — and employs more than 30,000 people, according to its website.

    The company also operated New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton, which closed in April, leaving behind millions of dollars in unpaid rent and fees.

    Steward’s management has cited an increase in operating costs and insufficient federal government-program reimbursement among the factors leading to the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

    Gov. Maura Healey has blamed “greed and mismanagement by Steward’s management, and says the bankruptcy process will increase transparency in the company’s hospital system.

    Healey has stressed that medical care will continue at the Steward hospitals throughout the bankruptcy proceedings and that patients won’t go without medical care.

    “Ultimately, this is a step toward our goal to getting Steward out of Massachusetts, and it allows us to do that to protect access to care, preserve jobs, and stabilize our health care system,” she told reporters at a Tuesday briefing on the company’s bankruptcy filing.

    The Healey administration has activated an “emergency operations plan” in response to Steward’s financial woes, including a command center to monitor the company’s hospitals in the state and manage the fallout of a bankruptcy filing.

    In a court fling ahead of Tuesday’s bankruptcy hearing in Texas, Attorney General Andrea Campbell argued that Steward “extracted value” from its Massachusetts hospitals to “pay substantial dividends to investors and expand their network in other states.”

    “These diversions have threatened to impact the debtors’ hospitals’ ability to provide health care within the commonwealth,” she wrote. “The debtors’ hospitals have been left without adequate resources to timely acquire and maintain needed equipment and infrastructure or even ensure an uninterrupted supply of emergency room drugs. Many are in disrepair.”

    Healey and members of the state’s congressional delegation, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have criticized the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management’s role in Steward’s finances. Cerberus created Steward after buying St. Elizabeth’s and five other Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts in 2010, according to the company’s website.

    In a statement, the company’s CEO, Ralph de la Torre, said the bankruptcy proceeding will ensure that the company is “better positioned to responsibly transition ownership of its Massachusetts-based hospitals, keep all of its hospitals open to treat patients, and ensure the continued care and service of our patients and our communities.”

    Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

    Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.

    [ad_2]

    By Christian M. Wade | Statehouse Reporter

    Source link

  • Healey urges passage of parentage rights bill

    Healey urges passage of parentage rights bill

    [ad_1]

    BOSTON — Massachusetts was the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriages but still lags behind others in granting LGBTQ couples parental legal rights.

    Advocates have pushed for years to change that by updating the state’s parental protections to cover children born through in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy and adopted by same-sex parents. Despite impassioned pleas from couples, who have packed committee hearings to tell their stories, the legislation has failed to pass.

    Now advocates are making another push to have the Massachusetts Parentage Act approved with a boost by Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat who took office last year as the state’s first openly gay chief executive. The governor has thrown her support behind the initiative.

    Healey said the measure would guarantee equality in parental rights regardless of gender, marital status or the circumstance of birth. Massachusetts is the only New England state without protections for LGBTQ families seeking the legal bond of a parent-child relationship, she said.

    “We’ve been proud to be a national leader and trailblazer when it comes to LGBTQ+ equality, but we’ve got some catching up to do,” she said.

    Attorney General Andrea Campbell, a Democrat, has also gotten behind the initiative, saying the state is falling behind others on parental rights laws, which “have not kept pace with the diversity of modern-day families.”

    The legislation, backed by dozens of lawmakers, received bipartisan support from Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and other Republican lawmakers.

    “No child in our state should be left in parental limbo caused by laws that haven’t been updated to recognize the realities of many families,” the Gloucester senator said.

    Tarr said the proposal would “create a straightforward path to establishing parentage that avoids unnecessary litigation and the bureaucratic hurdles that too often deprive kids and parents of the stability and well-being that comes from proper legal recognition and the rights that attach to that recognition.”

    Under current law, gay, lesbian and transgender mothers and fathers in Massachusetts sometimes have to adopt their own children to ensure parental rights, advocates say, a process that can take several months.

    Polly Crozier, director of Family Advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, said the changes are needed “to fill gaps in our laws that leave some children vulnerable and to ensure all families, no matter how they are formed, have the legal security they deserve.”

    “We hope to see this bill passed into law this session so that Massachusetts can stand proud as a state that recognizes and protects the dignity and worth of all children and families,” she said.

    Earlier this month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a package of bills updating the state’s parentage and surrogacy laws and repealed a law threatening criminal penalties against parents who engage in paid surrogacy contracts.

    Crozier said Whitmer’s approval of the changes is a “potent reminder of what strengthening families should look like in 2024 and it should serve as an inspiration to Massachusetts.”

    But supporters of the Massachusetts proposal are running out of time to approve the bill before the formal end of the two-year legislative session.

    The bill is pending before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, which was recently given a deadline of April 30 to decide on the proposal.

    Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.

    [ad_2]

    By Christian M. Wade | Statehouse Reporter

    Source link

  • Russia divestment promises largely unfulfilled

    Russia divestment promises largely unfulfilled

    [ad_1]

    BOSTON — Nearly two years after Massachusetts moved to strip the state’s retirement fund of Russian-tied stocks and other holdings in response to its war in Ukraine, that pledge remains largely unfulfilled.

    Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, state lawmakers approved a $1.6 billion bipartisan supplemental spending bill that called for divesting the state’s pension fund of an estimated $140 million in investments tied to the country. Then-Gov. Charlie Baker signed the bill, as well as an executive order directing executive branch agencies to conduct a review of state contracts to determine if there are any ties to Russian businesses that could be severed.

    Baker’s directive also called on independent agencies, public colleges and universities, and other constitutional offices to adopt similar policies.

    At the time, state leaders touted the move to pull out those investments was a small, but meaningful, way of expressing outrage over the unprovoked war, and showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people’s fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    But nearly two years after the much publicized move, little has changed. The state’s pension fund still has an estimated $140 million in investments tied to Russia, according to Treasurer Deb Goldberg, whose office oversees the retirement system.

    In a recent report to House and Senate clerks, the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management said the pension fund still has millions of shares tied to Russian entities in its investment portfolio.

    “With markets at PRIM’s investment managers’ disposal being suspended from trading in the Russian securities and markets, our investment managers have been unable to liquidate out of the majority of positions,” PRIM’s executive director and chief investment officer Michael G. Trotsky wrote in the report. “They continue to monitor the situation.”

    The data shows retirement fund managers have been able to divest more than 1 million shares in Russian investments since July 2022, including shares in Sberbank PJSC, Russia’s largest bank, and retail giant Magnit.

    State pension officials said the remaining shares tied to restricted Russian assets are essentially worthless as of Dec. 31, with a market value of zero.

    The PRIM reports also said investment managers with indirect holdings of restricted securities “have not removed restricted companies from their funds nor have these managers created similar actively managed funds which exclude these restricted securities.”

    But Massachusetts isn’t alone. Other states that took steps in 2022 to have their public employee pension funds divest their holdings from Russian stocks or cease any new investments into those entities have also made little progress to fulfill those pledges, according to pension fund groups.

    Pension fund experts say the global reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago cut off much of its economy from the rest of the world.

    But that has made it nearly impossible to move ahead with pledges of divestment by state retirement systems, university endowments and other public-sector holdings — as well as private investments like those in 401(k) accounts.

    Alex Brown, research manager at the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, said while many pension funds want to get out of Russian investments, it’s just not realistic to sell in the current environment.

    “The point wasn’t to engage in a fire sale of these assets, but rather to systematically identify opportunities to sell their Russian holdings in the most prudent manner,” he said. “It has to be a practical time to sell, but you also want to do it prudently.”

    Brown noted that collectively Russian investments account for only a “tiny fraction” of the more than $5 trillion value of state and local retirement funds. Much of the money was invested in Russian government bonds, oil and coal companies as part of emerging-markets index funds, experts say.

    Political observers also note that many investments in Russia purchased before the war are now almost worthless or substantially depreciated in value. That’s raised questions about whether divesting those funds is even necessary.

    Meanwhile, the Kremlin has also rewritten rules governing foreign ownership of Russian company shares in response to U.S. sanctions, which analysts say has triggered confusion among investors and increased their risks of heavy losses from holdings now stranded in the country.

    The Biden administration imposed a fresh slate of sanctions on more than 500 targets on Friday — the largest to date — in response to the death of opposition figure Alexey Navalny and on the eve of Russia’s two-year war in Ukraine.

    The United States and its allies have imposed sanctions on thousands of Russian targets in the past two years.

    “Two years ago, he tried to wipe Ukraine off the map,” Biden said in a statement. “If Putin does not pay the price for his death and destruction, he will keep going.”

    [ad_2]

    By Christian M. Wade | Statehouse Reporter

    Source link

  • Auditor DiZoglio, Merrimack Valley mayors highlight MeVa services

    Auditor DiZoglio, Merrimack Valley mayors highlight MeVa services

    [ad_1]

    HAVERHILL — Audits are typically a painful inconvenience to those being audited. Recently, however, several Merrimack Valley mayors joined with State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, D-Methuen, to highlight the positives that went along with a routine audit of Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority (MVRTA).

    DiZoglio’s office audits state-funded entities and county offices. It does not audit non-profits and other private entities.

    “While audits can be daunting, DiZoglio and her office understood from the start how important Regional Transit Authorities – RTAs – are to the communities we serve,” said Noah Berger, administrator and CEO of MeVa.

    “They worked with us as a partner with the goal of serving our passengers. We are thankful to the Auditor’s team for their review of our operations and are pleased to report that we have implemented all of their recommendations, which has made our service even better.”

    MeVa, also recognized as MVRTA, is the public transit serving 16 Merrimack Valley communities.

    To bring attention to the partnership, the mayors of Amesbury, Haverhill, Lawrence, and Newburyport – four of the 16 communities served by MeVa – hopped on a bus along with DiZoglio and recorded a social media video that brings attention to the successful audit and accessibility of services provided by MeVa.

    Methuen Mayor Neil Perry recorded his video at a different time and it was merged into the video of DiZoglio and the four other mayors.

    “Organizations like MeVa are a great example of how community partners can implement recommendations from our audit findings to increase access and opportunity for all across the region,” DiZoglio said.

    “They demonstrate that, by working together, we can accomplish more to improve the way state systems and resources perform and hold organizations accountable across state government in order to make government work better for everyone.”

    “Many people rely on MeVa for personal and professional travel,” said Amesbury Mayor Kassandra Gove, who also serves as chair of the MeVa Advisory Board. “I’m more than happy to have a little fun on social media, especially if it helps us spread the word about this amazing resource.”

    The 16 communities served by MeVa include Amesbury, Andover, Boxford, Georgetown, Groveland, Haverhill, Lawrence, Merrimac, Methuen, Newbury, Newburyport, North Andover, North Reading, Rowley, Salisbury, and West Newbury.

    “People are always surprised when I say I use MeVa to travel to my weekly dialysis appointments,” said Methuen Mayor Neil Perry. “I think those same people are just as surprised to learn that the Merrimack Valley has the gold standard of public transportation services. I hope this video helps raise awareness of the services available, and the ease of accessing them.”

    “Very happy and satisfied to have been invited to this project which brings us first-class information to our community,” said Lawrence Mayor Brian DePeña. “I must say that I had a lot of fun. Let’s keep up the good work!”

    “Over the last couple of years, MeVa has implemented changes to improve services, making it free and more accessible,” Haverhill Mayor Melinda Barrett said.

    “Haverhill is proud to host MeVa’s administrative offices, but even more so to have them as a strong partner to the city in getting residents and our workforce where they need to go across the Merrimack Valley.”

    “MeVa has been a tremendous partner to Newburyport and I look forward to continuing to find creative ways to engage our residents with all that MeVa offers,” Newburyport Mayor Sean Reardon said.

    To see the video, visit the Office of State Auditor’s pages on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or X (formerly Twitter), or on YouTube by searching for “Auditor Diana DiZoglio and Mayors go for a ride on MeVa Transit!”

    For more information on the audit of MeVa, as well as other state entities, visit mass.gov/lists/all-audit-reports.

    [ad_2]

    By Mike LaBella | mlabella@eagletribune.com

    Source link

  • 0813 Chronicle week in review: Right Rudder denied, two county terminations, more marijuana and a bear up a tree | Local News – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    0813 Chronicle week in review: Right Rudder denied, two county terminations, more marijuana and a bear up a tree | Local News – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    [ad_1]

    Airport operator accuses county commissioners of being anti-business

    When Andy Chan, the CEO of Right Rudder Aviation, asked county commissioners for a 50-year renewal of the lease for Right Rudder, the fixed-based operator at the Inverness Airport since September 2018, they said no.

    Get more from the Citrus County Chronicle

    [ad_2]

    MMP News Author

    Source link