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Fortune

Emma Hinchliffe

The Fortune 500's youngest female CEO bucks Big Health Care's M&A trend

Fortune Sarah London Centene Health Care

(Credit: Courtesy of Centene)

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Nicola Sturgeon was arrested in Scotland, it was a historic night for nonbinary actors at the Tony Awards, and the Fortune 500's youngest female CEO leads a major health insurer. Have a productive Monday!

- Healthy debate. Sarah London became CEO of Centene in March 2022. Her company is a Medicare and Medicaid insurer based out of St. Louis, ranked No. 25 on the Fortune 500 with $145 billion in annual revenue.

While London began her new role, her peer CEOs in health care were on an M&A spree. As Fortune's Erika Fry and Maria Aspan wrote for the latest Fortune cover story, Big Health Care has spent the past few years getting bigger. Health care businesses dominate the Fortune 500 with $2.77 trillion in combined revenue, second behind only finance.

Deals like CVS Health's acquisitions of primary care provider Oak Street Health and home health care specialist Signify Health—which totaled $19 billion—helped grow health care's share of the Fortune 500 pie.

Centene-CEO-Sarah-London

But Centene has bucked that trend. London has been on a "divestiture spree," Erika Fry writes in a new piece for Fortune. The company sold off "non-core units" including its pharmacy benefits manager Magellan Rx and its Spanish and Central European businesses.

London is an unusual CEO in another way. Of the 52 women to lead Fortune 500 businesses, 42-year-old London is the youngest. She was appointed to the job after serving as Centene's vice chairman and SVP of technology innovation and modernization. Before moving to Centene in 2020, she worked for UnitedHealth Group's venture capital arm.

Now, her peers include CVS's Karen Lynch and Elevance CEO Gail Boudreaux, the other two Fortune 500 female CEOs who lead health insurers. London has some thoughts on how women leaders may change health care: "It is an industry where a healthy dose of empathy in solution design and how you address problems gets you to a different answer."

Read the full story here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

The Broadsheet is Fortune's newsletter for and about the world's most powerful women. Subscribe here.

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