Joseph N. DiStefano
Shares of Customers Bancorp Inc., the $4 billion-asset, Wyomissing-based bank set up by former Sovereign Bank chief executive Jay S. Sidhu, opened at $17.40 this morning, a 65-cent premium to yesterday's initial public offering price. Customers sold 55% of its shares to the public on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbol "CUBI"..
Customers said it expects to raise a total of $97.75 milion, up from a targeted $75 milion, when broker allottments are exercized later this month. The bank sold an initial 5.37 miillion shares through brokers FBR Capital Markets, aided by Sterne Ageee & Leach Inc. and by Boenning & Scattergood of West Conshohocken. Lawyers from Stradley Ronon represented Customers in the sale.
The bank plans to use some of the proceeds to continue buying additional banks; its current ofice network stretches across urban New England and the mid-Atlantic states.
Joseph N. DiStefano
A South Jersey media executive tells me an announcement could come as early as today re the sale of the Press of Atlantic City newspaper, which owner John F. Bitzer 3d's Pittsburgh-based Abarta Inc. listed for sale in January. Rupert Murdoch's organization, which owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the Fox TV networks, and billionaire Warren Buffett's media group, which owns dailies in Buffalo, Omaha and other smallish cities, are among the rumored would-be buyers.
Joseph N. DiStefano
"Price fixing is an evil, wicked thing," the late Sun Oil Co. (Sunoco) boss Joseph Newton Pew warned the nation and rival oilmen during the Great Depression. Pew was scolding President Roosevelt and a cabal of Texas oil operators, who was trying to keep prices from falling so energy companies would stop laying off workers. But in today's world markets, it's the capitalist traders who are being investigated for propping up fuel costs at the public's expense.
Americans who watch the price of gasoline jump (and, sometimes, slip) with surprising speed commonly suspect big oil companies and traders of price manipulation. The companies and their allies in Congress just as regularly deny it. But since British oil giants Shell and BP changed the way they measure crude oil prices, European regulators have been investigating just how closely the majors work together to manipulate fuel prices, Bloomberg reports here.
The investigation recalls last year's still-unfolding scandal over financial traders who manipulated the London interbank offered rate (Libor), the benchmark price of money, says Reuters here. Both oil and money prices are measured by the London trading desks of big U.S., European and Japanese banks -- but these lightly-regulated benchmarks of capitalism are vulnerable to speculators who care more about their profits than honest pricing.
Joseph N. DiStefano
If Philadelphia really plans to boost alcohol and tobacco taxes, the city had better be ready to spend money on extra tax enforcement, and on busting city residents and visitors who try to buy their smokes outside the city, scholars warn.
The proposal by Phila City Councilman Darrell Clarke, backed by Mayor Michael Nutter, to help fund the city's cash-strapped schools by boosting the drink tax and slapping a $2 a pack tax on cigarettes faces resistance from smokers, drinkers and the people who make money supplying them. See my column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer:
Consumers aren't stupid, and many see nothing wrong with driving a little further to avoid their elected officials' increased demands. Though smuggling also draws criminals and suspected terrorists... See Drexel University Prof. Mark Stehr's work on how consumers cross state lines to avoid taxes. Also similar studies by U of Illinois scholar David Merriman and colleagues on the impact of higher cigarette taxes in Chicago, and New York.
Joseph N. DiStefano
General Electric Corp.'s GE Aviation jet engine maker plans to invest $27 million in its Newark, Delaware facility, adding a ceramic-matrix composites lab and at least 50 additional fulltime jobs, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell said in a statement.
The 110,000 sq ft plant current employs around 100. Delaware promised GE $1.1 milion in hiring and capital spending grant to encourage its expansion.
Joseph N. DiStefano
How do you blame a city for lying to taxpayers and bond buyers about its sad financial shape - without also blaming its mayor, or its finance officers, or any of the paid lawyers, bankers, and advisers who helped tell the lies?
That's what the Securities and Exchange Commission did last week when it busted Pennsylvania's capital city, Harrisburg, for lying about its financial condition from 2008 to 2012, after it borrowed too much and started going broke. I tell why in my column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer here. if you're not an online subscriber, you can still read it using code W72C, valid this week.
Joseph N. DiStefano
"Beginning the afternoon of Tuesday, May 14, 2013, [ABC network television] will be available to all viewers in the New York City area via WABC-TV, the nation's most watched broadcast station, and WPVI, the #1 local station in Philadelphia, as part of a special open access preview, running through the end of June," says ABC here.
"The new WATCH ABC service provides viewers for the first time ever with live access to their favorite ABC shows and local market programming...[and will include] on-demand full-episode viewing... Viewers can access WATCH ABC online at ABC.com or by downloading the WATCH ABC app on their iOS or Kindle Fire devices. The WATCH ABC app will be available on Samsung Galaxy devices this summer...
"This announcement represents a defining moment in technology and distribution, as well as for our advertising and affiliate partners, as we ensure that our high-quality content is available to viewers on a variety of devices," said Anne Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks, and president, Disney/ABC Television Group, in the statement.
Joseph N. DiStefano
Customers Bank, the Wyomissing-based, $3.5 billion asset company assembled by former Sovereign Bank chief Jay S. Sidhu, plans to sell $75 million in stock later this year, and has applied to be listed on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol CUBI. The stock currently trades over-the-counter as CUUU.
Customers has named BR Capital Markets & Co., Sterne Agee & Leach and Boenning & Scattergood, of Conshohocken, to lead the sale. More in Customers' SEC prospectus amendment here.
Joseph N. DiStefano
The cargo and fishing and pleasure-boat lines that once made the Delaware this region's main highway grounded long ago; now we have to pay the Delaware River and Port Authority $5 just to drive a car across, more for trucks. And try finding a public boat ramp -- or marine fuel stop -- in all the miles between Northeast Philly and New Castle, Delaware, or Penn's Grove, NJ.
It didn't used to be like this. A casual visit to the Delaware's overgrown banks show the ruins of the old "finger" piers that used to carry traffic between the wharves and private parks that lined the estuary from below Wilmington to way above Philadelphia.
Most of that vanished as oil refining and other heavy industries took over key real estate in the early 1900s, poisoning the water and driving people away. But the water is clearer now. True, DuPont Co. and other riverside industries still get busted from time to time for not meeting their promises to keep cutting acidic run-off. But then again, the authorities are also still closing Jersey Shore beaches on the Atlantic due to human-waste bacteria. And that doesn't scare millions of humans away.
Joseph N. DiStefano
UPDATE 11:30: Mid-Coast confirms banker Bailey resigned
EARLIER: A Delaware banker has left his job, after a business lender who he formerly supervised pleaded guilty last week to federal fraud charges for concealing bad loans before the collapse of Wilmington Trust Co., the state's largest bank, where the men worked in the late 2000s.
Brian Bailey left Mid-Coast Community Bank, where he was a vice president and business lender, the day after Joseph Terranova pleaded guilty to concealing bad loans when he was a lender at Wilmington Trust Co. Terranova was accused by federal prosecutor Charles Oberly of repeatedly extending loans to Dover developer Michael Zimmerman and others and hiding them from bank financial reports and government bank examiners after Zimmerman and other borrowers failed to pay the money back on time.
