A number of senior officers at area public companies cashed in some of their equity holdings last week. Leading the way was HealthSpring COO Mark Tulloch, who decided not to wait until Cigna closes on its acquisition of the Franklin-based company. He exercised thousands of options on Tuesday and Wednesday and sold the resulting shares for a gain of almost $2 million. Two other local executives completed deals under the auspices of newly set up trading plans: AmSurg development chief David Manning exercised 15,00 options and sold the shares for a profit of about $140,000, while Tractor Supply HR chief Kim Vella sold almost $150,000 worth of her stock.

Shares of local hospital chain LifePoint and insurer HealthSpring both are up more than 15 percent in the past three months as the broader market has flatlined, a fact that two of the companies' senior officers appear to have noticed as well. At LifePoint, Chief Adminstrative Officer John Bumpus exercised about 60,000 options — with an earliest expiration date of 2018 — and sold the resulting shares for a profit of more than $1.1 million. Over at HealthSpring, COO Mark Tulloch made a similar move, cashing in 40,000 options that would have expired in 2016 and pocketing a profit of a little more than $1 million.