Briefcase

Tax boss leaving H&R Block

Thomas Zimmerman, president of H&R Block Tax Services Inc., will retire at the end of April as his family faces a serious health issue, the Kansas City, Mo.-based company announced Tuesday.

Since 1996, Zimmerman has overseen the H&R Block’s largest subsidiary, which now has more than 9,000 U.S. tax offices. He has been with H&R Block since 1974, when he worked in Iowa as a tax preparer.

“We have a strong management team in place which enables us to take time to carefully consider alternatives before naming Tom’s replacement,” said Mark A. Ernst, the company’s president and chief executive officer.

Agriculture: White wheat popularity grows among state farmers

Kansas farmers planted slightly more than 1 percent of their wheat acres into hard white winter wheat for the 2002 crop, Kansas Agricultural Statistics reported.

The agency said the 1.1 percent of Kansas wheat acres were seeded into hard white varieties up from the 0.8 percent planted a year earlier. Much of it was planted in the western third of the state.

Meanwhile, the red variety Jagger solidified its spot as the leading wheat seeded in Kansas. Nearly 43 percent of Kansas wheat acres was seeded with Jagger, an increase of 7 percent from a year ago.

Western Resources: KCC checking debt plans

The Kansas Corporation Commission plans to conduct a hearing into Western Resources’ plan to pay off up to $1 billion of its nearly $3 billion debt.

The commission wants to determine if Western is tying up its utility assets with more debt. The hearing is scheduled for May 31.

“A full examination is necessary to protect Kansas electric consumers from harm caused by misallocation of debt between and among Western Resources Inc. and its unregulated subsidiaries,” the commission said in an order issued late Monday.

The commission also ordered Western to explain within three days why the pledging of utility assets to secure additional debt didn’t violate a previous commission order issued in July. The company also was directed to reveal whether it had sold or transferred utility assets in violation of the order.

Kansas: EDS gets Medicaid contract

A Texas company has received a $160 million, six-year state contract to transform the administrative and operational processes that support Kansas’ Medicaid program.

In the deal announced Tuesday, Plano, Tex.-based EDS will use a Web-based interface for processing Medicare claims. It also will handle managed care enrollment for medicaid and a children’s health insurance program.

Pharmaceuticals: ImClone rejects Bristol plan

ImClone Systems Inc. on Tuesday rejected Bristol-Myers Squibb’s proposal to fundamentally restructure their $2 billion partnership, saying the deal was not in the best interest of its shareholders.

Bristol was seeking to renegotiate the agreement because ImClone has been plagued by troubles since the Food and Drug Administration refused to accept the company’s application to review Erbitux, which was touted as a blockbuster cancer drug.

Bristol was seeking to remove two key members of ImClone’s management, eliminate further payments to the company and receive a bigger share of Erbitux’s revenues if it ever was approved.

Bristol had stunned the pharmaceutical industry late last year by spending $1 billion to purchase 19.9 percent of ImClone and paying the company an additional $200 million for signing the deal.