Joseph N. DiStefano
PC Helps takes the mystery out of high tech. And the glamour. The Bala Cynwyd firm's workers, at its City Line headquarters and a larger center in Cleveland, have been fielding personal-computer "Help!" calls since Jeffrey Becker started the firm in 1992 based on his (Northwestern U) graduate-student thesis: that PCs would never reach their potential to boost productivity unless users could get quick help for basic questions and problems -- and a company that rendered that service to multiple employers would be more efficient than in-house PC assistance.
The company is now 300 people, most of whom work the phones, marketing chief Laurie Zelco says. Now that more employees are working off their smartphones and hand-held devices, and with Microsoft Windows 8 launching across patforms, demand for PC Helps is up, says training director Joe Puckett. "We'll need more people to sustain and handle the volume. We are probably going to hire 60 this year."
The staff is a mix of people who've been to college and the self-taught, some with graduate-equivalent degrees. Some are retired techies, chemists, financial people. Puckett tells wouid-be workers what to expect and lets them self-select in or out. Starting salary, dependent on production after three months, is in the low $30,000s.
Joseph N. DiStefano
TargetX, a 15-year-old Conshohocken college-recruitment software company, says it has signed up Rutgers University's business school and Towson, Richmond and Bryant universities to use its Salesforce.com-based customer relationship management (CRM) software.
With just 23 employees, including satellite offices from Albany to Seattle, TargetX estimates 2013 sales at $5 million, a fraction of the industry's leading players. Ellucian, Fairfax, Va., formed last year in a combination between Datatel and Wayne-based SunGard's former college services division, has reported more than $650 million in past annual sales; Hobsons, Cincinnati, owned by Britain's Daily Mail newspaper group, has reported sales approaching $100 million.
Advancement CRM and Retention CRM are two new modules that complement our Recruitment CRM system. They're used by different offices (advancement and student retention) to cut those costs, help staffs become more effective and efficient, etc. They don't cut recruiting costs. Hopefully, Recruitment CRM does that.
Joseph N. DiStefano
ShopRunner, the shopping service owned by Michael Rubin's Conshohocken-based Kynetic that links American Eagle, Brooks Brothers, Toys R Us and 100 other retailers to mobile and online consumes in competition with Amazon Prime and Google Shopping, has put together a new deal with American Express 'to provide free [ShopRunner] membership to AmEx card holders," reports Shawn Milne, analyst at Janney Capital Markets in Philadelphia.
AmEx has done this kind of thing with ShopRunner in past Christmas shopping seasons - last year and in 2011 - but Milne tells clients in a report today that this larger deal is likely to bring in new merchants and customers. He estimates ShopRunner has 1 million members buying over $1 billion a year; ShopRunner hopes to "converting" a signficant number of AmEx's 40 million cardholders and reach a critical mass. The deal "helps validate the network and could be worth watching as the payment space rapidly evolves," Milne wrote. To make the service more attractive, ShopRunner boss Scott Thompson, formerly boss of PayPal (which, like Rubin's former GSI Commerce, is now owned by eBay), has rolled out a "potentially disruptive payments system called PayRunner," a "two-click" online purchase system that has boosted sales at Toys R Us and other early adopters, pressuring Google Wallet to build a similar system, according to Milne. What's in it for AmEx? If ShopRunner gains AmEx traffic, that will drive more purchases and debt through AmEx's network vs. rivals Visa and MasterCard. PayRunner also helps merchants "fight back against the massive share gains by PayPal in mobile commerce," though there's got to be a little more to the story, given the tight business links between eBay and Kynetic.
Joseph N. DiStefano
When JPMorgan Chase & Co. shareholders will vote in the company's annual meeting Tuesday on whether the board ought to split Jamie Dimon's dual roles as board chairman and bank chief executive, many of the voters will represent firms - like Malvern-based mutual fund giant Vanguard Group - that are themselves run by chairman-CEOs, reports Bloomberg here. “People just like him are going to vote on this,” Erik Gordon, University of Michigan law and business professor, told Bloomberg. “If you’ve told your own board that the best structure for the sake of the company is to combine the roles, then how do you turn around and say, ‘But that’s not true for JPMorgan?’”
Joseph N. DiStefano
In this digital world, old-industry companies can be busier than ever. Take Nick Maiale's Pennsauken, N.J. printing company, Inserts East Inc., which recently borrowed nearly $5 million from TD Bank to add new presses and hire 30 people - boosting total employment above 200. Maiale says he's so busy printing circulars and newspaper inserts for ShopRite, A.C. Moore and other retailers that he's getting ready to add more printing machines. He's growing despite - and partly because of - cutbacks and shutdowns at rival printers like AFL Web Printing, whose private equity owner shut its Voorhees plant last winter, and bankrupt Vertis Communications. What does it take for an old-economy company to expand in the face of plant closures? What are bankers thinking when they advance money for heavy iron instead of software? Read more in my Page One story in today's Philadelphia Inquirer here. Not a subcriber? Use promo codeD18T to access the story this week. Some highlights:
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.
