PhillyInc

Starting Monday, Feb. 18, this blog can be found here on Philly.com's publishing platform. Over time we will restore some of our current features, such as company news releases. But the new spot immediately gives us some better capabilities. It also coincides with the launch of our business news webcast, Philadelphia Business Today on the Business & Money page at Philly.com, with a new video every day.

Our address www.phillyinc.biz has not changed. But for anybody who bookmarks us, the actual URL is now www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillyinc. See you there.

- PhillyInc editors

Posted by phillyinc at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Friday, Allied Security Holdings L.L.C., of King of Prussia, signed off on a new employment agreement for its longtime CEO, William C. Whitmore Jr.

Allied Security is one of the nation's largest providers of security guards for shopping malls, office buildings and college campuses. It is 70 percent owned by Ronald Perelman's MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings conglomerate.

Under the new five-year agreement, Whitmore's annual base salary rises from $544,000 to $675,000, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The board's compensation committee will consider increasing that annual salary:

... based on comparisons with salaries of chief executive officers of comparable companies in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, geographic area, using a four percent increase as a benchmark.

(So, assuming Whitmore were to get a 4 percent increase next year, that would push his salary to $702,000.)

He is also eligible for an annual incentive bonus of 50 percent of his salary.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The local stock that rose the most among non-penny last week was GMH Communities Trust, of Newtown Square. American Campus Communities Inc., of Austin, Texas, agreed to buy GMH, which ignited the Delaware County company’s shares, which closed Friday at $8.84, up 55.1 percent. Both GMH and American Campus specialize in providing off-campus student housing for colleges and universities.

First Resource Bank, a small Exton bank, saw its shares fall the most. It closed at $5.40, down 16.9 percent. The bank, which has less than $100 million in assets, released its 2007 financial results last Monday. First Resource posted its first annual profit of $650,973 since it opened in May 2005.

Why'd the shares fall then? Maybe it had to do with the $6.5 million decline in deposits during the fourth quarter. The bank did say that its deposits rose $5.7 million in January alone to $75.3 million.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember Exelon Corp.'s John Rowe earlier this week talking about the $400 billion that utilities will have to spend to build power plants that have low-carbon emissions?

Gilbert Masters, a Stanford professor emeritus, gives a good reason why there's some urgency. He says current oil supplies in all nations would last the world for only about 41 years.

Others have predicted the end of petroleum, but Masters actually appears to see signs of hope and would throw some more business to the electric power generation industry. He's bullish on the development and wider adoption of electric-powered vehicles.

Why?

"Electricity is an inexpensive fuel," said Masters who advocates generating electricity for cars from sunlight using photovoltaic technology.

And while you might think that kind of talk only plays well in California, consider that a company that makes a raw material to make solar cells today broke ground to build a new manufacturing plant in Fairless Hills. AE Polysilicon says it would employ 145 people at the factory, which is in a low-tax Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You wouldn't think getting sued by a federal agency for unlawful marketing behavior would be catalyst for a company's shares to rise.

But yesterday Cephalon Inc. shares closed at $61.42, up $3.98, or nearly 7 percent.

That increase in value came less than a day after the Federal Trade Commission sued the biotechnology firm over deals it cut with potential generic drug competitors to forego the making cheaper copies of Cephalon's Provigil sleep-disorder drug until 2012.

Cephalon, in defending both its practice and patent validity for Provigil, had this to say after the FTC took action:

We are disappointed that the FTC has determined to challenge these agreements as we believe they fully comply with both the spirit and letter of the antitrust laws. As importantly, our settlements confer a meaningful benefit to U.S. consumers by providing for the entry of generic modafinil three years early.

Several analysts say that federal government has had little success in changing this industry practice. And it looks like the market agreed on Thursday.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Board members come and go so often that, unless the change involves a well-known name, few notice.

On Monday, Radnor-based Brandywine Realty Trust announced the resignation of two members of its board of trustees. Brandywine, developer of the prism-like Cira Centre near 30th Street Station, is a real estate investment trust focused on office properties.

Thomas F. August and Michael V. Prentiss stepped down from the board they'd joined little more than two years ago, following Brandywine's acquisition of Dallas-based Prentiss Properties Trust in a $3.3 billion deal.

Brandywine chairman Walter D'Alessio said in a statement that the company wished "Tom and Mike all the best in the future."

But the recent past may have been a different story.

Continue reading "Ex-Brandywine Realty board member lets loose in letter" »

Posted by phillyinc at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Comcast Corp. will pay its first dividend - a payment totally 25 cents annually.

That's a first for the Philadelphia-based cable television giant. And it's a move long sought by shareholders, especially some of the activist hedge funds that have taken aim at how the company has been managed.

Here's what Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had to say:

With a business model that generates significant cash flow, we are in a position to take advantage of profitable growth opportunities while continuing to return capital to shareholders.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going "green" isn't a new trend.

Every prolonged spike in the price of crude oil has spurred companies and individuals to try new ways to reduce their use of petroleum whether as a fuel or industrial raw material.

Still, experimentation with non-fossil fuels should be encouraged, especially if you believe that one day every country will be abiding by some carbon emissions cap.

But make no mistake, changing the carbon bootprint of the United States is going to be expensive. If there were a cheap, simple substance to replace oil, it would have been adopted long ago.

The electric power industry says it's willing to ride the green wave, but Exelon Corp. CEO John Rowe gave a speech Tuesday warning about the cost. That's in greenbacks rather than greenfields.

Continue reading "Exelon CEO needs $400 billion to save the world" »

Posted by phillyinc at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Federal Trade Commission late today sued Frazer, Pa.-based Cephalon Inc. over what it called anti-competitive behavior preventing competition to its sleep disorder treatment, Provigil.

Cephalon is paying four generic drug makers to refrain from selling generic versions of Provigil until 2012. It's a practice other pharmaceutical companies have engaged in.

But the FTC says that practice violates the law. It sued Cephalon in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

In a news release, the commission's Bureau of Competition Director Jeffrey Schmidt said:

Today's suit against Cephalon seeks to undo a course of anticompetitive conduct that is harming American consumers by depriving them of access to lower-cost generic alternatives to an important branded drug.

Provigil, a treatment for narcolepsy and shift-work sleep disorder, has been a big seller for Cephalon.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was kind of a surprise to hear a union praise Wal-Mart, especially since the retail giant is generally vilified by the labor movement.

But Ann Kempski, deputy director of legislation for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), told a group of area human resource executives that the Arkansas retailer deserves at least some points for opening mini-clinics staffed with nurse practitioners in its stores. The inexpensive care will particularly help some of the low-wage workers -- janitors, home health aides, security guards -- that SEIU so often represents.

"I think that these clinics that Wal-Mart is creating have the potential to be an incredibly transformative thing," she said, speaking on a panel put together by Mercer, a human resource consulting firm, at the Four Seasons hotel in Philadelphia this morning. The panel was intended to inform the group about the political landscape for health care reform.

Kempski said that Wal-Mart's program will improve access and "will help drive down costs" through its use of nurse practitioners for some routine care, instead of more-expensive doctors. "We can not produce more doctors," she said.

Almost exactly a year ago, the SEIU and several others partnered with Wal-Mart, AT&T and other major employers in a joint effort to improve health care. When SEIU's president, former Univ. of Penn grad Andrew Stern, stood on the platform with Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to announce the program, it was a shock.

In doing so, SEIU broke with an ally, the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has been campaigning hard against the retail giant. Chief among UFCW's complaints has been Wal-Mart's less than stellar performance in providing health insurance for its own employees. Wal-Mart has improved its coverage in the last year, but not enough critics say.

Kempski agreed. "I'm still a critic of Wal-Mart when it comes to benefits for their own employees."

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Posted by phillyinc at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Quakertown-based Cellegy Pharmaceuticals Inc. has agreed to be acquired by a California specialty drug developer in a stock transaction.

Adamis Pharmaceuticals Corp. is a privately held firm working on treatments for viral infections, including influenza. Adamis CEO Dennis Carlo will become the head of the combined company.

Carlo is a heavy hitter from the West Coast, having been CEO of Immune Response Corp. and president of Telos Pharmaceuticals.

Cellegy has struggled financially, trying to develop Savvy, a contraceptive gel that has its roots in the West Philadelphia labs of a company called Biosyn.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As big as it is, Citigroup Inc. probably does a lot of deals all over the world that barely make a ripple outside of the trade press.

Last month, it bought a small company that has the kind of Philadelphia story we don't hear enough of.

Citigroup acquired a Bala Cynwyd company called PayQuik, which has developed a money transfer system that banks and other financial services firms use to allow customers to transfer money internationally.

PayQuik is focused on remittances, the payments by migrants to families back home - Latin America, India, China, wherever home is. Migrants' options typically are to send the money with someone traveling to their hometown, use a money transfer service such as Western Union or MoneyGram, or go to a bank.

In 2006, 150 million migrants worldwide sent more than $300 billion to their families in developing countries, according to research commissioned by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. One analyst projects that figure could grow to $500 billion by 2010.

Continue reading "Citigroup snaps up another Phila. tech firm" »

Posted by phillyinc at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a report, that won't send anyone dancing into the streets, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a survey of professional forecasters that sees "weak growth" for the first half of 2008.

Those surveyed see economic growth of 0.7 percent, rather than the 2.2 percent they projected three months ago, the Fed says.

Guess what? That's not a recession, but weak growth doesn't feel too good either.

The pros are looking for real gross domestic product to grow 1.8 percent in 2008 and 2.9 percent in 2009.

However, the New York Times is looking for recession. David Leonhardt has this analysis, reading between the lines of the Fedspeak:

The recession-probability index — which the Philadelphia Fed calls the Anxious Index — has yet to miss a recession entirely or to signal one that never happened.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No doubt manufacturing has steadily evaporated here, but Ametek Inc., of Paoli, has been acquiring quite a collection of subsidiaries all over the world.

Ametek could be one of the quietest publicly held $2 billion companies around. Its operations are scattered across 19 states and 10 foreign countries. But occasionally Ametek does a local deal. Yesterday, it bought Newage Testing Instruments Inc. , of Southampton. Unless you're into testing the hardness of metals, Newage is not likely to be familiar.

But it's the kind of company that Ametek seeks out for its customers in the aerospace, industrial, process and power markets. Ametek does have one claim to fame: It boasts that it is the world's largest maker of "air-moving electric motors" for vacuum cleaners.

- Mike Armstrong

Posted by phillyinc at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)