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PixelMEDIA completes intranet for Aubuchon
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, June 7, 2007
Amtrol Inc., of West Warwick, said yesterday that it has emerged from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection after the closing of a $128-million exit-financing facility and the approval of its reorganization plan. The plan won 100-percent approval from the holders of Amtrol’s senior subordinated notes with more than 98 percent of the holders electing to receive equity in exchange. The new equity holders, led by Newport Global Advisors, have converted their notes into equity in the reorganized company. The restructuring has reduced the company’s debt by 45 percent and greatly lowered its cost of debt capital and interest expense. Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse arranged the exit financing. The money was used to repay the debtor-in-possession financing in place during the restructuring, to pay the few note holders that elected cash as well as the costs and expenses of the bankruptcy cases and to fund the ongoing operations of the company.
Amgen Inc., the world’s largest biotechnology company, which has a manufacturing plant in West Greenwich, agreed yesterday to buy closely held Alantos Pharmaceuticals, a company developing treatments for arthritis and diabetes, for $300 million in cash. The acquisition is the second announced this week by Amgen, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., whose anemia treatments Aranesp and Epogen may face declining sales because of evidence of increased risk of heart attack, stroke and death. Amgen said June 4 that it will spend $420 million to buy Ilypsa, a closely held developer of drugs for kidney disorders. Alantos’ lead drug candidate is ALS 2-0426, to treat type 2 diabetes, Amgen said. The drug, taken by mouth, targets a substance that mediates blood-sugar levels after meals. Alantos is based in Cambridge, Mass., with a location in Heidelberg, Germany, and employs 45 people. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, which starts July 1.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Northeast Concrete Products Association (NCPA) have formed an alliance to reduce hazards and protect the health and safety of employees in New England’s concrete-products manufacturing industry. Under the alliance, OSHA and the NCPA will work together to develop and present training programs for association members and others to help them identify and eliminate hazards associated with falls, electrocution, noise, silica, work in confined spaces, and being struck by or caught in machinery. “Knowledge is the most valuable tool in the workplace,” said Marthe Kent, OSHA’s New England regional administrator.
The Portland, Maine-based New England chief of the Small Business Administration is resigning his position because of his deployment to Iraq. Charles Summers, a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, will report to active duty July 6 and serve with Naval Strategic Communications in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Summers, who is from Scarborough, Maine, has served as SBA regional administrator since 2005. He will leave the post at week’s end, officials said Tuesday.
American Skiing Co. is selling the Sunday River and Sugarloaf USA ski areas in western Maine to Boyne USA Inc. of Michigan for $77 million in cash. Park City, Utah-based American Skiing said it expects the transaction to close on or before July 31. Boyne, which will assume $2 million in debt and liabilities in the deal, is a privately held company that has interests in seven North American resort properties. American Skiing president B.J. Fair said Boyne “is an established operator and should bring a wealth of vision and resources” to Sunday River in Newry and Sugarloaf in Carrabassett Valley. But Fair said that with so much of the company’s roots and history at the Maine resorts, “it will be hard to part ways with these resorts.”
Warwick-based MetLife Auto & Home and Advanced Protection Technologies, of Clearwater, Fla., have entered into a contract under which MetLife customers, and those of its affiliates, have the opportunity to purchase, at a special discount, products and services designed to protect homes against the damaging effects of power surges. This offering is the first of its kind in the property and casualty industry for APT. Under the agreement, APT will allow MetLife’s customers access to discounts on a variety of surge suppression products, through a specially created Web page that offers APT’s Surgeassure product line, and access to a database of licensed, local electrical contractors that APT certifies as qualified to install the surge suppression products.
LighthouseMD, a Providence-based provider of revenue-cycle management and integrated-practice management to medical groups, has announced that Rhode Island’s largest medical practice, University Medicine Foundation Inc., has chosen LighthouseMD’s Care-Tracker system. The nonprofit organization has incorporated the revenue-cycle management and practice management throughout its 19 sites, serving more than 60,000 patients in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Integration, customization and training of Care-Tracker into the UMF organization began in January and the Web-based system is now fully available to the group’s 140 physicians and 15 nurse practitioners. Key to UMF’s selection of CareTracker was its ability to manage e-prescribing, conduct automated notification of patient appointments, and electronically interface with Lifespan Laboratories to access patient lab results and x-rays. The system will also enable physicians to perform functions such as automated order processing, recording of patient visits into a digital file, capturing and storing clinical images and streamlining billing and collections.
Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc., of Foxboro, Mass., a medical-device company focused on developing novel implantable products to treat neurological diseases and injuries of the central nervous system, has announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently issued U.S. Patent 7,212,851, titled Microstructured Arrays for Cortex Interaction and Related Methods of Manufacture and Use, to Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cyberkinetics is the exclusive licensee of the patent, which relates to the next generation of the company’s BrainGate neural interface technology. “The claims contained in this patent form the basis for the development of a next-generation system that we envision will combine on-board processing and wireless signal transmission technologies,” stated Timothy R. Surgenor, Cyberkinetics’ president and chief executive officer. “We believe that such a system will contribute significantly to our efforts to commercialize our BrainGate technology products, including our NeuroPort Neural Monitoring System, which has been designed to detect and predict epileptic seizures.”
Portsmouth, N.H.- based PixelMEDIA Inc., a professional services consultancy focused on Internet enablement, has completed a new employee intranet for Aubuchon Hardware. A family-owned business that operates more than 130 hardware stores throughout Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and upstate New York, Aubuchon now has real-time, centralized communication among its stores, enabling greater collaboration and productivity. PixelMEDIA recommended the design and development of an intranet with an integrated content management system.
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