My finance view

SXC Health Solutions Corp. agreed to buy Catalyst Health Solutions Inc. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.4 billion to stay competitive as larger pharmacy benefit managers join forces.

Catalyst investors will receive $28 in cash and 0.6606 shares of SXC stock for each Catalyst share under the terms of the agreement, the companies said. That implies a purchase price of $81.02 per Catalyst share, 28 percent above Tuesday’s closing prices.

Pharmacy benefit managers are combining after Express Scripts Inc., the largest in the U.S., agreed to pay $29.1 billion for Medco Health Solutions Inc. SXC, one of the biggest providers of technology for processing prescription claims, was the target of speculation last month.

The company is now in position to be one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit companies, said Brian Tanquilut, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. in Nashville, Tenn.

“SXC will be the next big player in the PBM space,” Tanquilut said. “The opportunity to win new business from the larger guys, meaning Express-Medco, CVS, is there.”

SXC Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thierer will continue in those roles in the combined company. “We will be the second-largest independent PBM in the country, in terms of prescription volume,” Thierer said. “The transaction will expand our reach to larger clients.”

The companies have little overlap among clients, with Catalyst having many state employers while SXC has state Medicaid clients, Thierer said.

“This catapults SXC and Catalyst into a much better negotiating stance,” said Anthony Vendetti, a Maxim Group LLC analyst in New York who follows both companies. “It gives them more leverage with drug manufacturers and drug distributors and because of their increased size, it gives them more leverage with clients.”

Founded as Systems Xcellence in 1993, SXC negotiates with drugmakers for lower prescription medicine prices on behalf of health insurers, Medicare and Medicaid plans, workers’ compensation programs and long-term care facilities.

SXC also makes software that processed one out of every five drug claims in the U.S., according to the company’s 2010 annual report.

Tanquilut said the company may take a year to complete the integration, then move on to more deals to keep growing and compete with Express Scripts and CVS. The company needs to add smaller assets in specialty pharmaceuticals, most of which are likely to be closely held regional companies, he said.

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The Donald, camera shy?

The Star was denied entry at a Toronto press conference featuring real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump Monday to officially open the new Trump International Hotel.

Why? A spokesperson at the event said the event was

Dole Food Co.’s fresh vegetables division is recalling 756 cases of bagged salad, because they could be contaminated with salmonella.

The bags of Seven Lettuces salads were distributed in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The company said the bags are being recalled, because a random sample tested by the State of New York came back positive for Salmonella. No other Dole salads are included in the recall.

The recalled salads are stamped with a use-by date of April 11, 2012, UPC code 71430 01057 and product codes 0577N089112A and 0577N089112B, the company said.

The product code and use-by date are located in the upper right-hand corner of the package, while the UPC code is on the back of the package, below the barcode fast payday loans.

Dole said that it’s coordinating with regulatory officials and that no illnesses have been reported.

Consumers should throw out the recalled salads. Dole said it’s also contacting retailers to make sure the bags in question are not available for sale.

The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight to 72 hours of eating the contaminated food. The illness can be severe or even life-threatening for infants, older people, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.

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Never have I been less qualified to address a subject than the one you’ll read about today — fashion.

Let the record show I’m wearing jeans as I write this. It’s Wednesday. Not that it matters now that casual Friday has morphed into casual every day.

I once looped a tie around my neck every morning. It usually didn’t match my threadbare oxford shirt and always carried evidence of meals that didn’t quite make it from the plate-to-my-mouth. But it was, at least, a feeble nod toward professional attire.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I wore a tie to work or, for that matter, last purchased neck wear. Nor, apparently, can a lot of other people.

“There is no one way to dress for business anymore, where there used to be a set formula,” said Nancy Nix-Rice, a St. Louis image and wardrobe consultant.

Anyone who has paid a visit recently to an office occupied by small business or start-up can certainly attest to that.

Jeans, polo shirts and sweaters are standard attire in the boutique marketing firms, information technology and other companies with no designs of ever nailing down a spot on the Fortune 500.

In the small-business world, shorts are de rigueur summer wear for both men and women, and a tie is what happens when a soccer game ends with neither team scoring.

“There’s no doubt some people have taken business casual way too far,” said Nix-Rice. “And that sends a message that either says, ‘I’m an intellectual, and can’t be bothered by something so mundane as to how I look.’ Or, it’s a (finger gesture) approach that tells your employer, ‘You can’t tell me what to do even if you own the company.’”

Many trace the dressing down trend to young tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. But many medium-to-large corporations and law firms continue to buck the trend, unwilling to allow employees to dress as they see fit.

With the exception of casual Fridays in the summer months and occasional informal office celebrations, Edward Jones employees are expected to meet certain standards whenever they stroll into corporate headquarters.

For men, the rules call for a shirt, tie, suit or sport coat. For female employees, it means business attire.

Human resources executive Beth Cook said the Edward Jones dress policy rests on “the fundamental belief that being a professional is dressing like one.”

Monsanto, a little more lax, encourages its employees to arrive at the office in business casual.

The biotechnology giant’s dress code, in part to protect lab workers, bans open-toed shoes along with “shorts, skirts, tank tops and other garments that expose large areas of skin…”

The definition of professionally appropriate fashion started to evolve long before the first office worker through caution to the wind and wore shirt sleeves on a stifling August afternoon.

A reader responding to an informal survey on dress codes I posted to LinkedIn recalled the day when corporations required male employees to cover their heads.

“The hat you chose spoke to your status and position in the company as well as your attitude of professionalism,” the reader wrote remembering the co-worker who, in flaunting convention, was “henceforth known as ‘the man without a hat.’ A label he wore with pride.’”

Today, as often as not, the label will read Levi Strauss.

Nix-Rice has no squabble with jeans in the workplace. But she counsels it’s best to offset (preferably unfaded) denim with shirts and upper body wear that conveys a more, well, buttoned-down approach.

“Appearance is language,” she advises clients. “It’s what you are saying all day, even to yourself.”

In many ways, the folks at Edward Jones and other offices with strict dress codes have an easier time than those left to our own sartorial devices.

“Business dress today is confusing,” Nix-Rice acknowledged. “On one hand, you don’t want to look like the dork who didn’t get the business casual memo. But on the other hand, you don’t want to be the slob who doesn’t tuck in his polo shirt.”

Looking ahead, it’s not difficult to envision tomorrow’s corporate cubicle and office dwellers viewing mandatory business attire through the same prism with which we regard the rules that once placed a hat on the head of our grandparents.

Don’t think it will happen? Consider this: Time MoneyLand last month reported the results of a survey in which 93 percent of millennials (20- and 30-year-olds) said they gravitate toward workplaces that allow them to dress “in a way that makes them comfortable.”

Jeans, evidently, symbolize the truest measure of comfort, with 79 percent of the respondents saying they should be allowed to wear denim to work at least some of the time.

Finally, a note to anyone tempted to invest their life’s savings in necktie futures. MTV has attached another moniker to an age group already tagged as millenials and Gen Y.

It’s the “No Collar Workforce.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“It must always be noted that these numbers are statistics—and complicated ones, based on tens of thousands of surveys from businesses and households, which are then massaged by a variety of quantitative techniques to produce the unemployment rate, the size of the labor force, and a host of other numbers. They are not absolutes, and they are not unequivocal facts. The definition of “unemployment” is not simply out of work; you can be without a job for years and not “unemployed” as a statistic; once you cease actively looking for work, you cease to be part of the workforce and hence are not “unemployed.” “Employed” also says nothing about wages. You can have two jobs and still earn less than the official poverty rate or be unable to support a family of five, and that indeed is the case for tens of millions of people.” - Primer by economist and money manager Zachary Karabell on how to interpret the federal government’s monthly report on unemployment.

Source: The Daily Beast

BY THE NUMBERS

$42,569 - The median salary for 2012 college graduates holding a bachelor’s degree at minimum — a 4.5 percent increase over the median salary earned by the Class of 2011.

Source: National Association of Colleges and Employers

FINAL WORD

“At G.M. you did the same thing every 48 seconds. In the nursing job, you don’t know what’s going to walk in the door.” — former autoworker Ken Harris on a new career path he took as a result of the type of retraining program now endangered by federal budget cuts.

Source: The New York Times  

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The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage dropped near its all-time low this week, making home-buying and refinancing a bargain for those who can qualify.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan fell to 3.88 percent from 3.98 percent. That’s just above the rate of 3.87 percent reached in February, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The 15-year mortgage, a popular option for refinancing, plunged to a fresh low of 3.11 percent from 3.21 percent last week. The previous record of 3.13 percent was hit last month.

Mortgage rates are lower because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Last week’s disappointing report on March job growth led more investors to sell stocks and buy Treasurys, which are considered safer investments. As demand for Treasurys increases, the yield falls.

Employers added just 120,000 jobs last month _ half the monthly pace from the previous three months. Many economists downplayed the weak March figures, noting that a warmer winter may have led to some earlier hiring in previous months.

The mild winter has helped lift expectations for the housing market after four years of sluggish sales.

January and February made up the best winter for re-sales in five years, when the housing crisis began. And builders in February requested the most permits to construct homes in more than three years.

Cheap mortgage rates are also brightening the outlook. They have been below 4 percent for all but one week since early December faxless pay day loans.

Applications for new mortgages have fallen over the past month, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, But there has been a sharp rise in the average loan size, suggesting a bigger appetite for home loans. The average size of mortgage applications has increased by $20,000 since December, to about $235,000 last month.

Home prices continue to fall. Prices tend to lag sales and millions of foreclosures and short sales _ when a lender accepts less than what is owed on a mortgage _ remain on the market. And the housing crisis and recession have also persuaded many Americans to rent instead of buy, which has led to a drop in homeownership.

To calculate the average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on just Monday through Wednesday of each week.

The average rates don’t include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fees for the 30-year and 15-year fixed loans were unchanged at 0.7.

For the five-year adjustable loan, the average rate fell to 2.85 percent from 2.86 percent, and the average fee fell to 0.7 from 0.8.

The average on the one-year adjustable loan rose to 2.80 percent from 2.78 percent, and the average fee was unchanged at 0.6.

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Japan

Identity theft isn

The U.S. job market took a breather in March after its best hiring stretch since the Great Recession.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month _ half the December-February pace and well short of the 210,000 economists were expecting. The unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent in February to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009, but that was largely because many Americans stopped looking for work.

Still, few economists expect hiring to fizzle in spring and summer, as it did the past two years. And they blamed seasonal factors for much of Friday’s disappointing report from the Labor Department.

“We don’t think this is the start of another spring dip in labor market conditions,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics.

The report was also closely watched in political circles. If employers retreat on hiring, consumers could lose confidence in the economy and potentially dim President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes.

Ashworth and other economists cited the weather for the latest jobs report. A warm January and February allowed companies to hire workers for outdoor jobs a few weeks earlier than usual, effectively stealing jobs from March. It partially explains a 34,000-job drop in retail hiring and a 7,000 drop in construction jobs.

“Our winter didn’t really exist,” said Alan Amdahl, who runs his own construction company in Sioux Falls, S.D. “It’s just incredible. People didn’t hibernate.”

Economists also say the numbers can bounce around from month to month. Consistently creating 200,000 jobs a month is tough. The economy hasn’t put together four straight months of 200,000 or more new jobs since early 2000.

Economists are still encouraged by the recent hiring trend: The economy has generated an average 212,000 jobs a month from January through March.

Anthony Chan, chief economist at JP Morgan Wealth Management, noted strong growth among businesses that are especially sensitive to the economy’s health. Hotels and restaurants hired 39,000 workers. Manufacturers added 37,000.

The factory hiring is especially welcome. Expanding factories create more jobs at the mines that produce raw materials, in warehouses and at trucking companies and at utilities that generate power.

Government jobs, which declined by an average 22,000 a month last year, fell just 1,000 in March. An improving economy is generating tax revenue and easing budget problems at city halls and statehouses across the country.

The March slowdown brings back painful memories of what happened in mid-2010 and 2011, when the economy lost momentum and job growth sputtered.

The job market had been on a recent roll. From December through February, the country added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was better since the recession ended was March through May 2010, when the government was hiring tens of thousands of temporary workers for the census.

Companies across the country are hiring:

_ Nimble Storage, a young information technology company in San Jose, Calif., is rapidly adding staff to keep up with demand for its data storage devices. Anup Singh, the company’s chief financial officer, says the explosive growth of data and the need for companies to store, analyze and deliver it is driving rapid expansion. Nimble Storage has added 30 employees so far this year, bringing its workforce to 175 cash advance america. It expects to hire 70 more by the end of the year. They are hiring engineers, sales people and customer support staff.

_ Landry & Kling Cruise Event Services in Miami, which arranges events on cruise ships, has added two workers this year and plans to hire two more. Sales are strong.

“It’s like the floodgates are opening,” says CEO and co-founder Joyce Kling. “There’s an energy to our day now. We see a lot of leads floating through.”

_ IdeaPaint, a company that makes washable paint that people can use erasable markers on, has hired seven workers in the last three months. Sales have risen sharply and are expected to keep rising. So the Ashland, Mass.-based company has more plans to hire _ it has 31 employees now and expects to have 40 at the end of the year.

“We just had a board meeting yesterday and agreed to become more aggressive with our hiring, with our advertising, with our investment spending. We’re very confident,” CEO Bob Munroe said.

The unemployment rate has dropped from 9.1 percent last August to 8.2 percent last month, the lowest since Obama’s first month in the White House.

Each month, the government does one survey to learn how many jobs were created and another survey to determine the unemployment rate. Those surveys can produce results that sometimes seem to conflict.

One is called the payroll survey. It asks mostly large companies and government agencies how many people they employed during the month. This survey produces the number of jobs gained or lost.

The other is the household survey. Government workers ask whether the adults in a household have a job. Those who don’t are asked whether they’re looking for one. If they are, they’re considered unemployed. If they aren’t, they’re not considered in the work force and aren’t counted as unemployed. The household survey produces each month’s unemployment rate.

Unlike the payroll survey, the household survey captures farm workers, the self-employed and people who work for new companies. It also provides a better snapshot of hiring by small businesses.

In March, the household survey showed that the number of people who say they have a job fell by 31,000 and that a significantly larger number of people _ 79,000 _ stopped looking for a job. That is why the unemployment rate dipped.

Some economists, most notably Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, say the job market faces bigger problems than unseasonably warm weather and month-to-month volatility in the employment numbers. They say the economy isn’t growing fast enough to sustain strong job growth and to push the unemployment rate down rapidly.

The economy is expected to grow 2 percent to 2.5 percent this year. Chris Jones, of TD Economics, says that is not fast enough for sustain the monthly average of 245,000 jobs created from December through February. He expects the economy to average 200,000 new jobs a month in the April-June quarter and then to pick up speed.

“The last few months of aggressive employment growth were inconsistent with underlying economic fundamentals,” Jones said. “March’s number, while still weak, actually makes sense.”

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Payrolls rose far less than expected in March, keeping the door open for further monetary policy support from the Federal Reserve, even as the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low of 8.2 percent.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, the smallest increase since October. Economists polled by Reuters had expected nonfarm employment to increase 203,000 and the jobless rate to hold at 8.3 percent.

The weak employment growth last month likely reflected the fading boost from unseasonably warm winter weather. The payrolls count for January and February was revised to show just 4,000 more jobs created than previously reported.

The drop in the unemployment rate, to the lowest level since January 2009, reflected a drop in the labor force. The separate household survey, from which the jobless rate is derived also showed a drop in employment.

The weak employment gains could hurt President Barack Obama’s chances for re-election in November. The unemployment rate has fallen from 9.1 percent in August.

The painfully slow recovery in the labor market is a concern for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is keeping open the option of further monetary policy support for the economy if the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high pay day loans.

Minutes of the Fed’s March policy meeting released this week showed policymakers seeing a broadening of the economic recovery, leaving them slightly less inclined to launch a third round of bond purchases, known as quantitative easing, to spur growth.

The private sector added 121,000 new positions in March, while government employment edged down 1,000.

Manufacturing enjoyed another month of strong job gains, with factories adding 37,000 new positions, helped by carmakers trying to meet pent-up demand for motor vehicles. Factory jobs increased by 31,000 in February.

Construction hiring fell 7,000, the second straight monthly decline. In the huge service sector, gains were in healthcare, professional and business services categories. Temporary help fell 7,500 after rising 54,900 in February.

Despite the weak employment gains last month, average hourly earnings rose 5 cents.

The workweek dipped to 34.5 hours from 34.6 hours in February.

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The unemployment rate has fallen dramatically over the last six months, but just how low can it go?

The answer is being debated among two camps of prominent economic thinkers. One school of thought says that unemployment will return to around 5% as the economy eventually recovers. But an opposing view states that permanent changes in the labor market mean higher unemployment is here to stay.

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Obama battles job crisis

Before Obama even took office, America had lost 4.4 million jobs. Track his progress since then.

Among those who believe the first, more optimistic scenario is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He thinks that unemployment will fall as part of the regular business cycle, and stimulative policies that boost demand could bring us back to a more normal unemployment rate of between 5% and 6% some time after 2014.

There’s plenty of research to back that up. A recent report by economists at Harvard, the San Francisco Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund suggests that three-quarters of the sharp rise in unemployment during the financial crisis was in fact due to cyclical, not permanent, factors.

And unemployment has indeed fallen sharply as the economy has slowly recovered from the recession. As of February, the unemployment rate stood at 8.3%, a substantial drop from 10% at the height of the financial crisis.

Check the unemployment rate in your state

Under the second, far less rosy scenario, 5% unemployment is out of reach. Devotees of "structural" unemployment, believe permanent shifts mean the job market may never fully recover, even as the broader economy does cash advance.

Nobel Prize winning economist Edmund Phelps, for example, calls a return to a 5% unemployment rate a "pipe-dream."

Phelps likens the economy to a skater who’s taken a bad fall. Just getting a boost might not be enough, because the skater may have a few broken bones.

What are those broken bones?

Less innovation, increased competition from low-wage countries, more efficient technology and a shortage of high-tech skills among American workers may all be to blame.

Another problem: Baby Boomers are working longer than their predecessors, creating a demographic shift in the labor market.

Plus, many Americans are finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Many workers do not have the skills required by employers in the location where employers are seeking jobs," Wells Fargo Chief Economist John Silvia said in a recent research note.

All of these factors are a recipe for a longer lasting shift in the labor market, and mean stimulative policies won’t have much of an impact, according to the structuralists.

So just how much further will unemployment fall?

The Labor Department will release March’s unemployment rate on Friday. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney are expecting the report to show the unemployment rate remained at 8.3% for the month.

Longer term forecasts are all over the map.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the unemployment rate will eventually fall as low as 5.3%, but not until 2021. Economists at Goldman Sachs, however, estimate that due to structural reasons the new normal unemployment rate may now be 6% at best.

The biggest wild card that could shift that balance is the long-term unemployed. Of the 12.8 million Americans who are unemployed, 42.6% have been out of work for six months or more.

"If progress in reducing unemployment is too slow, the long-term unemployed will see their skills and labor force attachment atrophy further possibly converting a cyclical problem into a structural one," Bernanke said last week. 

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