It’s been more than two months since shareholders of malpractice insurer SCPIE Holdings Inc. approved the Los Angeles malpractice insurer’s merger with the Doctors Co. And two months since SCPIE informed the New York Stock Exchange that it would soon be delisting its stock.

Yet SCPIE shares continue to trade, albeit lightly, on the NYSE as Sacramento regulators ponder whether the merger of the state’s second and third largest health care liability insurance companies would create an unacceptable monopoly.

A spokesman for the California Department of Insurance declined to detail what were the outstanding issues or if the extended review indicated problems with the deal.

SCPIE spokesman Howard Bender said the company had complied with requests for additional information but has received no update from insurance regulators on when a decision might come on the merger, first announced in October.

In 2007, Doctors controlled 24 percent of the California malpractice market, mostly in the north, with SCPIE controlling 15 percent, mostly in the south. San Francisco-based Norcal Mutual Insurance Co. had the largest share of the market at 27 percent.

Under the agreement, Napa-based Doctors, a physician-owned company, has agreed to buy SCPIE for $28 per share in cash, or a total of about $281 million.

Biotech Big Bucks

While U.S. biotechnology companies had little trouble raising money last year, the industry fell just short of reaching profitability, in part due to the mid-year credit crunch.

That’s the conclusion of a new industry review from accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young.

The firm had earlier projected the biotech industry would reach profitability by 2007, but believes that milestone is now reachable by 2010, said Dan Kleeburg, a partner with Ernst & Young’s Southern California life sciences practice.

While the industry’s oldest companies, such as Thousand Oaks-based Amgen Inc., reached profitability years ago, the three-decade-old industry is still dominated by young companies and start-ups struggling to reach profitability.

U.S. publicly held biotechs lost $277 million in 2007, according to the Ernst & Young study, a significant improvement over the $5.6 billion overall loss in 2006. Los Angeles County-Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area were the only two regions to show a profit, in large part due to Amgen and South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc.

In Los Angeles-Orange County, 21 public companies reported a combined $18.9 billion in revenues and $2.9 million in net income. In comparison, the Bay Area, which has 77 mostly smaller companies, reported a larger $22 billion in revenues, but only $2.6 billion in net income.

Venture capital continues to play a critical role, with investments, stock offerings and debt deals pumping in a near-record $21 billion into the industry nationwide.

The Southern California region, which stretches from L.A. to San Diego, recorded $1.35 billion in venture funding and $8 billion in debt financing. That’s only slightly less than in the Bay Area, the industry’s largest market.

“If you look at 2007, it was a great year from a financing perspective,” Kleeburg said.

He added that the industry was in even better shape than the venture capital and equity financing number suggest, with big pharmaceutical companies looking to biotech to help spur their own growth.

“When you consider that Big Pharma is still looking to biotechs to broaden their pipelines, there is a lot of interest in what’s being developed.”

NutraDyne Name Change

NutraDyne Group Inc. has changed its name to reflect its business interests in the People’s Republic of China.

The City of Industry-based company will now take on the name of its wholly owned subsidiary, Yongxin Pharmaceuticals Inc., a wholesale distributor and retailer of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and cosmetics.

The company has plans to open stores in the U.S. to promote traditional Chinese medicine, said Chief Executive Yongxin Liu in a statement. In China, its retail stores operate under the Yongxin Pharmacy name and supply hospitals, clinics and retail stores.

The company moved to the City of Industry after being formed in 1993 in Changchun, the capital city of Jilin province, where it continues to have its Chinese headquarters. The company has 11 retail stores in Northeast China, with two pharmacies under construction in the U.S.

The company’s ticker symbol on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board has changed to “CYXN.”

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232.