While Cigna waits to see if its $53 billion takeover by Anthem survives a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, CEO David Cordani this week outlined to investors a Plan B of stock buybacks and capital deployment should the deal fall apart.
The deal's deadline is April 30, 2017, and Cigna could have more than $5 billion to spend on acquisitions or share buybacks by that time.
Anthem was not commenting on the investor hearing where Cordani made his statements, according to spokeswoman Jill Becher.
While Cordani outlined a Plan B to investors, he made it clear during a July 29th earnings conference call that Cigna remains committed to its deal with Anthem.
"We are fully engaged and continue to be fully engaged in the process with full support of all contractual obligations as we have provided…," Cordani said during the July 29 call.
[Also: Anthem answers Department of Justice complaint on Cigna merger]
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates said he would retain the Aetna-Humana case but said the Anthem-Cigna case would be reassigned to another judge because he could not try and decide both cases by the end of the year, according to the status conference held last week.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia will reportedly take over the Anthem-Cigna case.
All of the involved insurers argued for trials to start this fall, while the Department of Justice recommended trials starting in February 2017, according to published reports.
[Also: Anthem CEO stresses company's commitment to pending merger with Cigna]
Judge Bates said that he would set a pretrial calendar faster than the Department of Justice's proposal, but also firmly stated that the court would not be pressured by companies into scheduling an overly hasty trial, according to David Balto, an antitrust expert.
In July, the DOJ filed injunctions against both mergers based on antitrust and anti-competitive concerns.
Twitter: @SusanJMorse