Former UnitedHealth CEO under increasing scrutiny

Money Fattened CEO picks convenient time to quit

By Rachel Beck (AP)

William McGuire ran UnitedHealth Group Inc. like his personal fiefdom, allowing the former CEO and his cronies to gain tremendous wealth with few internal controls to stop them.

That's the startling conclusion of a board-mandated probe of how the health insurance giant timed its stock-option grants over the last decade. But the review headed by former SEC top cop Bill McLucas ends up telling a much more important story: That of a controlling leader who put his personal interests ahead of the welfare of the company's shareholders.

Such revelations led to McGuire's "retirement" this week after a 15-year tenure. Quite a convenient way to go, given the damage he has caused the company and its investors.

This certainly wasn't the send-off many had expected for McGuire, who joined the company in 1989 and rose to chairman and CEO in 1991. He has been lauded for engineering UnitedHealth's rise from a regional health insurer into one of the largest managed care companies in the country.

But those achievements have been overshadowed in recent months by allegations that the company manipulated the grant dates of stock options to executives to when the company's share price was depressed. The backdating of options documented in the report allowed executives to pocket unfair and potentially illegal profits that they never disclosed to shareholders.

The article is here. Minnesota Monitor and Vox Verax have covered Dr. McGuire's political contributions here.