Traverse City Record-Eagle

Business

July 11, 2012

Business in Brief: 07/11/2012

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ----

Mich. doctor sued over stock deals

GRAND BLANC — A Flint-area doctor who was chairman of an insurance company has been accused of illegal stock trading in the sale of American Physicians Capital in 2010.

Federal regulators filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Dr. Apparao Mukkamala of Grand Blanc and four other doctors who know him. The Securities and Exchange Commission says they bought more than $2 million of American Physicians Capital stock and sold it for a $623,000 profit after the company's sale was announced.

The SEC says Mukkamala illegally shared information about the anticipated sale of the company when no stock trades were to be made by insiders. He was chairman of East Lansing-based American Physicians Capital before it was acquired by The Doctors Co. of Napa, Calif.

Building costs rise at US nuclear sites

ATLANTA — America's first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry's hopes for a jumpstart to the nation's new nuclear age.

Licensing delay charges, soaring construction expenses and installation glitches as mundane as misshapen metal bars have driven up the costs of three plants in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, from hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of public records and regulatory filings.

Those problems, along with jangled nerves from last year's meltdown in Japan and the lure of cheap natural gas, could discourage utilities from sinking cash into new reactors, experts said.

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