Archive: May, 2011
Joseph N. DiStefano
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia, has upheld a $23.6 million damages and interest award to William A. Graham Co., the Philadelphia insurance agency, from USI Midatlantic Inc., a New York insurance brokerage. A federal jury found in 2009 that USI used documents stolen by an ex-Graham employee to compete for corporate insurance business, from the early 1990s, until Graham sued to stop the practice in 2005. USI had challenged the verdict as excessive; a three-judge panel disagreed and affirmed the award and interest. USI now expects "to seek judicial review of the ruling with the United States Supreme Court," USI general counsel Ernest Newborn II told me. If it has to pay, where will USI get the money? That's "presently the subject of existing litigation proceedings," he added. USI's controlling owner is Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.
Joseph N. DiStefano
M&T Bank says attrition and transfers have helped cut the number of workers it plans to fire at Wilmington Trust Corp. by the end of this year to 630, from a projected 721, out of 2,800 acquired in M&T's takeover of the troubled Delaware bank.
Buffalo-based M&T, whose investors include billionaire Warren Buffett, today closes its $351 million acquisition of Delaware's dominant bank, its 48 Delaware branches, its 2 Wilmington office towers, and its tax-shelter and money management office network, which stretches from London to Los Angeles. As part of the deal, M&T paid off Wilmington Trust's $330 million federal TARP investment last Friday, says Atwood "Woody" Collins 3d, head of M&T's Baltimore-based mid-Atlantic region, which includes Wilmington.
Joseph N. DiStefano
Pittsburgh-based Blue Cross affiliate Highmark is trying to take over Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware. (Highmark, a Blue Cross affiliate, was shot down in its most recent attempt to combine with Philadelphia's Independence Blue Cross was shot down by the Rendell administration, under pressure from Pennsylvania doctors and hospitals worried a combined Blue Cross would be able to slow medical-price inflation. Delaware's elected insurance commissioner, Karen Weldin Stewart, plans hearings - this week! - on the schedule below. More on the merger hereMonday May 16, 6:30-9:30 pm, Delaware Technical & Community College, William A. Carter Partnership Center, Room 555 A & B, Georgetown, Delaware (way south near Rehoboth)
Joseph N. DiStefano
(Updated) Cristobal Conde is leaving his job as boss at SunGard Data Systems, the $5 billion (yearly sales) Wayne data-recovery, financial, college and government software company he headed since 2002, SunGard says here.
Conde will be replaced May 31 by SunGard outsider Russell Fradin, a former executive at Aon Hewitt, Bisys Group, ADP and McKinsey, and a Wharton and Harvard MBA graduate. Spokesman Brian Robins called it a planned transition.
SunGard's four main businesses all showed sales declines last year. The company employs 20,000, including around 2,000 in Wayne, Malvern, Center City and other Philadelphia-area sites.
Joseph N. DiStefano
3i Infotech Ltd., Mumbai, says it's agreed to sell J&B Software, of Plymouth Meeting, and Regulus Group, of Edison, NJ, to Cerberus Capital Management, the giant New York-based buyout firm, for $137 million.
(Cerberus is best known for its investments in Chrysler and other industrial companies, but financial tech is not a completely new area for Cerberus, which is also an investor in financial companies like home lender Ally Financial (ex-GMAC), and financial software firms like GXS Inovis.) 3i bought J&B in 2007 and Regulus in 2008 and combined them into its Global Billing and Payments Unit. J&B, started by veterans of nearby Unisys Inc. in the 1980s, develops and sells software-payment services to banks and other businesses. As of last year the group employed around
Joseph N. DiStefano
DuPont Co. says it's won control of Denmark-based food-additives giant Danisco for around $6.3 billion, or $133 a share, after most of Danisco's owners agreed to a sweetened version of DuPont's original $5.8 billion offer.
The Dansico deal boosts DuPont's production of food preservatives and biofuels, including enzyme-based ethanol, which Dansico and DuPont already produce in partnership. It extends DuPont's long move away from basic industrial chemicals toward food, energy and medical products. DuPont statement here.
Joseph N. DiStefano
Michigan-based Stryker Corp. says it will pay $316 million, or $3.85 a share, to buy Malvern-based Orthovita Inc., which employs 256 developing and selling bone replacement materials. The price gives no premium to Orthovita's recent trading level and is below its peak 2009 price of nearly $7 a share. Read Stryker's statement here.
Joseph N. DiStefano
Philadelphia City Planning Commission will hold its regular third-Tuesday meeting on May 17, 1 pm, upstairs at 1515 Arch St. Among items on the agenda:
CITYWIDE
- The "final" draft of Philadelphia's 25-year zoning code update;
- The School District's 5-year capital program (what are they going to do with all the schools they are likely to close?
CENTER CITY
- A "mixed-use development" at 1900-1920 Arch
Joseph N. DiStefano
Americans are living longer and having fewer kids to pay their bills as they grow old, so we're going to have to adjust Social Security and Medicare (higher taxes, lower benefits, or both) if we want them to still be there when we need them, according to the annual trustee reports. Read the Social Security report here and Medicare here. "Both Social Security and Medicare have sufficient resources to meet their obligations for at least the next decade," but "reform will be needed so that they will be there for current and future retirees," says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in disclosing the numbers.
If Congress and the President do nothing, Social Security will be able to pay all benefits "for the next 25 years." But after that it will have to raise more money or reduce checks. Or we can boost Social Security contributions a little now (the opposite of what Obama did when he temporarily cut payroll deductions last year), or else trim Social Security payments (for example, to higher-income retirees, or younger retirees, or the disabled.)
