Wolters Kluwer To Acquire Medi-Span From Hearst Corp.

Hearst Corp. (New York) has tentatively agreed to divest Medi-Span (Indianapolis, IN), a drug database company to Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins (Philadelphia, PA), a division of Wolters Kluwer (Amsterdam). The sale is contingent on approval from the Federal Trade Commission and would be part of a proposed settlement of antitrust charges brought against Hearst by the FTC. Wolters Kluwer said that talks concerning the deal are ongoing and that no terms have been agreed upon. Hearst acquired Medi-Span in January 1998.

Medi-Span has annual sales of approximately $24.6 million. Founded in 1973, the company provides electronic drug data and clinical information that is integrated into the business systems software at more than 20,000 pharmacies, 2000 hospitals and selected health insurers and physicians' offices. The company's drug database includes more than 100 elements for all prescription and over the counter products sold in the U.S., including details on dosages, strengths, ingredients, pricing data, and product coding. It also carries information on drug interactions, allergic reactions, dosage errors, and Hearst also owns First DataBank Inc. (San Bruno, CA), a pharmaceutical database company that offers electronic drug, medical and nutrition information. The purchase of Medi-Span prompted a suit from the Justice Department charging that Hearst failed to produce key documents for the FTC's pre-merger review and that combining First Data-Bank with Medi-Span gave Hearst a monopoly over a significant type of drug informat ion.

In October of this year, Hearst agreed to pay $4 million to the Justice Department to settle charges. The civil penalty is the largest a company has ever paid for violating antitrust pre-merger requirements.