Cheap Tickets’ sale to Cendant clears hurdle

Cendant Corp.'s pending acquisition of Honolulu-headquartered Cheap Tickets Inc. took a step forward with the announcement today that a 30-day waiting period for antitrust objections has expired with no challenge to the deal.

New York-based Cendant, a giant travel-industry franchisor with such brand names as Avis, Days Inn, Howard Johnson and Ramada Inn, agreed to pay $16.50 a share for Cheap Tickets, or about $425 million in cash to Cheap Tickets shareholders.

Cendant launched a public tender offer, which will expire at midnight Sept. 21, but under the agreement with Cheap Tickets it already has been promised at least the 47 percent held by Cheap Tickets founder Michael J. Hartley and his wife Sandra.

Formed in 1986, Cheap Tickets is a major seller of discount travel through the Internet and call centers across the country.

J&J drug-coated stent looks good in study

Stockholm, Sweden >> Johnson & Johnson's experimental drug-coated stent prevented arteries from re-clogging in a new study, giving the U.S. health-care company an advantage in the potential $4 billion market for the devices.

None of the patients who received the Cypher stent suffered another blockage, said Marie-Claude Morice, who oversaw the trial. By comparison, arteries reclogged in 26 percent patients who received uncoated versions of the devices, metal tubes used to prop open ar- teries that have been cleared in a procedure called angioplasty.

The results, better than investors and doctors expected, may help J&J regain its lost leadership in the stent market. The firm's share of the market fell to 11 percent last year from 95 percent four years ago as rivals like Guidant and Boston Scientific brought out their own stents and worked on experimental drug-coated models.