Accretive Health Pops 40% on Settlement Agreement

Shares of healthcare service provider Accretive Health

were seeing increased strength during Tuesday's trading session after the company announced Monday a settlement with the Minnesota State Attorney General. Accretive Health announced that it has entered into an agreement to settle the allegations brought against the company by the Minnesota State Attorney General earlier this year following the theft of a laptop, from which no patient data was accessed. The settlement contains no admission of liability or wrongdoing. Additionally, throughout the course of her investigation, the Attorney General did not and could not identify a single patient in Minnesota who experienced a problematic interaction with an Accretive Health employee. The company also said that in its experience it never witnessed client personnel demonstrate inappropriate behavior toward a patient and there were no cases found of a single patient, out of millions of interactions, that even alleged they were ever denied care by any person. J.P. Morgan came out with a positive note Tuesday morning about this event, saying that Accretive Health was a buying opportunity for the weeks to come. J.P. Morgan commented, "Accretive Health yesterday announced a settlement with the MN AG in which Accretive will pay $2.5M to settle charges stemming from a lost laptop, and cease operations in MN. We expect the shares to trade sharply higher today and in coming weeks—the settlement is a big step forward in restoring the company's reputation, and sets the path to remove several other overhangs that were part of the bear thesis on AH." Tuesday, shares of Accretive Health traded up over 34 percent, at about $13.44 per share.