Joseph N. DiStefano
Infosys Ltd., a Bangalore, India company that does cut-rate software engineering work for big U.S. firms, has "entered a partnership with IPsoft Inc., which uses software robots to replace engineers at top outsourcing customers including Comcast Corp., the largest cable operator in the U.S.," reports India's Hindustan Times here, citing three unnamed sources.
IPSoft, a New York company whose clients also include Bank of America, is also a Comcast tech vendor: It was hired by the Philadelphia-based cable-Internet-video programming giant in 2008 to provide automatic billing systems and added database server and Oracle Financials systems, often "without human intervention". Comcast employs around 3,800 in Philadelphia, including around 600 engineers, executive vice president David L. Cohen said last year.
"Robots and humanoids" from IPSoft (founded by ex-NYU Prof. Chetan Dube), UK-based Blue Prism Ltd. and other upstarts "automate and deliver information technology projects at a cost that is less than one-fourth the billing rates of engineers" from outsourcers like Infosys and Tata Consultancy; the software robots "are the latest threat to India’s $100 billion IT services business," the Wall Street Journal and India's Live Mint reported here in November. "IPsoft counts Comcast Corp., the largest US cable company and BT Group Plc, the UK’s biggest phone firm, among its top customers."
Joseph N. DiStefano
The Brandywine Conservancy, which owns or has helped landowners set up conservation easements, land preserves and federal and local tax benefits over 45,000 acres in Pennsylvania and northern Delaware, is asking for community comment on its work as it seeks its five-year re-accreditation before the Land Trust Accreditation Commission www.landtrustaccreditation.org.
Land trust and conservancy advocates set up an accreditation system after The Inquirer, the Washington Post and other news organizations in the early 2000s documented cases of other conservancy groups trading properties at preferential prices with wealthy and influential board members with little public benefit and considerable public expense.
"We were one of the first eight awarded accreditation back in 2008," Sherri Evans-Stanton, director of Brandywine's Environmental Management Center, told me. "Accreditation grew out of a number of tax-related concerns having to do with donations of easements."
Joseph N. DiStefano
David Stockman was among the more lucid of the Reagan revolutionaries. The first-term budget director developed a reputation as a realist among ideologues. He left as government spending stripped past tax collections and the national deficit soared.
He's been back as an increasingly adamant (and best-selling) critic of fairy-tale economics by both Republicans and Democrats. His opinion piece "Sundown in America," in Sunday's New York Times, makes a lot of valid points about the murderous bankruptcy of the Bush II administration, for example.
But is he going too far in preaching doom? And will this kind of scare talk help persuade more Americans, including the radicals right and left who would break the current wealth-dominated representative-government system, that the nation really is hopeless? Or will it at least help sell more copies of Stockman's new book?
Joseph N. DiStefano
Wawa and Sheetz, Pennsylvania's "two big gas-and-milk, Cokes-and-smokes, Tastykakes-and-store-built sandwich chains try not to fight. They're not like Ford vs. GM. Instead, they have mostly drawn lines and split the land between them. Like Comcast and TimeWarner Cable," I wrote in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer here.
"Which you prefer depends on where you were raised: Wawa is Philly and the Shore from Jersey to Virginia Beach. Also Florida, since last year. Sheetz is Pittsburgh and the valley highways below the green ridges, all the way to Greensboro, N.C.
Joseph N. DiStefano
TA Associates Realty, a Boston-based firm that invests pension plan dollars, has agreed to pay $33 million to acquire Highview at Providence Corporate Center, two Class A office buildings totalling 183,000 sq ft near Collegeville, Montgomery County, which have been mostly occuiped by IMS Healthcare since they were vacated by the former Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in 2010 after Wyeth was bought by Pfizer.
Seller was Equus Capital Partners Ltd., the former BPG Properties, which built Highview for Wyeth in 2003. Brokers Jim Vesey and Doug Rodio of Jones Lang LaSalle's Philadelphia office represented BPG in finding the buyer for the property, which is part of the master-planned, 121-acre Providence Corporate Center. UPDATE: How's the price? "Although IMS has a long term lease, they have vacated 50% of the leased space. So lenders were not comfortable financing a well-leased but not occupied-office building," says Vesey, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle. "Replacement costs today could be anywhere from $175 to $225 per sq. ft."
Joseph N. DiStefano
Bryn Mawr Bank Corp., which owns Bryn Mawr Trust Co. and its west-suburban Philadelphia branch network, says it's agreed to pay $33 million in stock -- or 0.52 Bryn Mawr shares for each acquired share -- for Wilmington-based MidCoast Community Bancorp Inc., its 3 Wilmington-area branches and 1 Dover branch, $235 million in loans, and $250 million in deposits.
Bryn Mawr boss Ted Peters told me MidCoast CEO Jim Ladio will run the company's Delaware operations going forward. Bryn Mawr last year acquired a First Bank of Delaware office near the state line; it's among the banks gunning for former Wilmington Trust Co. personal and business clients (and lenders and trust bankers) since the state's largest bank hit the rocks and was taken over by M&T Bank amid the late financial crisis.
Near-record low interest rates have made it tough for small banks like Mid-Coast to make money from loans and deposits. Bryn Mawr is a larger, more diversified company whose subsidiaries include Lau Associates and other asset-management groups whose focus includes rich Delaware residents.
Joseph N. DiStefano
Down at the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza's The Fix has laid out a fanciful "Sweet 16" brackets of Republican and Democratic Party hopefuls for the 2016 Presidential election, including a surprising lot of locals.
Under #1 seeds ex-Secretary of State (and U.S. Sen. and First Lady) Hillary Clinton (D) and Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R) we find... two local #2 seeds: Delaware's own U.S. V.P. Joe Biden for the Ds, and NJ Gov. Chris Christie for the Rs.
Further down the bench thins out quick. See for instance Gov. Jack Markell (D-14) and ex-Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-12). (Serving Pennsylvania politicians, by contrast, are out of the running.) Thanks to Markell's past spokesman Brian Selander, now laboring at building a "pro-sports-community" with TheWhistle, for pointing out his ex-boss's name in lights, in this political dreaming season.
Joseph N. DiStefano
UPDATE: Bruce Castor, the remaining Republican on Montgomery County's three-member Board of Commissioners and a conservative hope to replace Pa. Gov. Tom Corbett, wants some credit for the credit rating agency's newly improved view of the county's finances. Write Castor:
"I vigorously and loudly opposed the borrow and spend mentality that created the fiscal mess in the first place last term. That governing philosophy championed by Joe Hoeffel was the price Jim Matthews was willing to pay to overturn the will of the voters and shut me out of the government.
"When I would not go along, the consequence was I became the lone voice for fiscal sanity which news outlets covering us almost universally bought into the "sour grapes" spin put on my 'no' votes, greatly diminishing my own credibility and political capital. In fact, I almost lost my seat within my own party and had to endure a relentless advertising campaign that I was a person who couldn't get along with, and work with, others. All completely false as subsequent events have shown.
Joseph N. DiStefano
More Jobs! More Money! say the people backing Pa. Gov. Tom Corbett's plans to turn the Pennsylvania Lottery and the State Store liquor sale system over to private operators.
His lottery plan can only add jobs and revenues if private managers convince Pennsylvanians to bet more, through new games like keno in new locations like bars and restaurants, as I noted in this Jan. 21 Philadelphia Inquirer column.
As the pro-privatization Commonwealth Foundation notes in this report yesterday (we published a version in the Inquirer here), State Store opponents tell us that "ending the state-run monopoly will create thousands of additional jobs across the state and unleash millions of dollars in new business investment. The plan allows beer distributors to expand their already safe and reliable businesses, creates hundreds of new wine and liquor outlets, and enables grocery stores to expand to sell wine and beer to meet the needs of consumers."
Joseph N. DiStefano
Realtime Media, the Bryn Mawr firm owned by onetime Inquirer publisher Brian Tierney's Brian Communications (with backing from Radnor-based NewSpring Ventures), is helping magazine publisher Hearst Communications, publisher of Cosmpolitan, Esquire and other magazines, to target smartphone users for in-store prize awards, Bloomberg LP's Olga Kharif writes here.
