Safeco set sights on insurance unit

Safeco is bidding for the U.S. insurance arm of Credit Suisse Group's Winterthur, a unit that may fetch as much as $1.5 billion, said three people involved in the auction.

As many as five bidders are in the running for the unit — which had auto, home and commercial policies worth $1.43 billion in premiums last year — said the people, who declined to be identified because details haven't been disclosed publicly.

Bellevue-based Unigard is one of Winterthur's two units.

Final offers are due by mid-November, one of the people familiar with the auction said.

Paul Hollie, a spokesman for Safeco, declined to comment.

Micron Technology

Judge tosses suit over chip patents

Micron Technology's lawsuit challenging patents on computer-memory chips owned by Mosaid Technologies was thrown out by a federal judge in California who said the dispute should be heard in Texas.

Boise, Idaho-based Micron, the biggest U.S. maker of memory chips, sued Mosaid in California July 24, seeking a ruling that the Mosaid patents were either invalid or not infringed. The next day, Ottawa-based Mosaid sued Micron and two other companies in Eastern Texas, a jurisdiction considered friendly to patent owners.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, Calif., on Monday agreed to throw out Micron's suit, saying that because the Texas case involves more parties, the patent matter could be heard there.

Micron spokesman Daniel Francisco said the company had no comment because the litigation is pending.

Nation / World

ImClone

Investor wins bid to chair biotech

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn won his two-month campaign to take control of ImClone Systems, ousting the biotech's interim chief executive and engineering his own election as chairman.

Icahn said he will seek a new CEO with experience to boost sales of the company's only product, the Erbitux cancer drug. ImClone's third-quarter profit rose 85 percent, beating analyst estimates, though sales of Erbitux were less than expected.

Icahn owns 14 percent of ImClone shares and has handpicked five of the 10 directors.

ImClone's shares rose $1.56, or 5.3 percent, to close at $31 Tuesday. Shares are down 9.5 percent this year.

Compiled from Bloomberg News