Archive: June, 2008
UPDATED 7/1: HIG Capital, Miami, is scheduled to clinch the sale of Shapes/Arch Holdings LLC at a hearing on July 8, said J. Scott Victor, senior managing director and co-head of the Special Situations Group at National City Investment Banking, West Conshohocken, which is overseeing the sale. The closing will follow later in July.
HIG agreed to pay $31.5 million and take over Shape’s $60 million bank debt to CIT Group and other lenders. That beat an earlier $26 million offer by Versa Capital Management Inc. of Philadelphia. Shapes been owned by the Kendall family and management.
Teamsters Local 627 and other Shapes unions agreed that Shapes will stop funding the workers’ pension plan, said Victor.
HIG has been buying up aluminum extruders around the country. In 2005 HIG bought Signature Aluminum, Greenville, Pa. In 2006 it added Temroc Metals Inc., Hamel, Minn., and Atlantic Aluminum LLC, Lumber Bridge, N. Car.
NewSpring's Zev Scherl joins the Core Essence board. Core Essence is run by CEO Shawn Huxel and cofounders Alan Miller and Jeff Miller. The trio previously worked at New York-based Small Bone Innovations (SBi).
UPDATE: Brandywine says it's talked to U.S. and German investors but it's not ready to announce any Cira investors.
ORIGINAL ITEM: The commercial real estate rumor mill says Brandywine Realty Trust, Radnor, has lined up buyers for its current Cira Center and planned Cira South developments on the west bank of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia.
According to one version from a pro who's been right before, Germany's SEB Group would take over Cira, which is almost 100 percent leased, while JPMorgan would agree to invest in Cira South, where Brandywine CEO Jerry Sweeney hopes to land the BlackRock investment group as a tenant, with help from state and city tax breaks. No comment yet from Brandywine.
Meanwhile, Brandywine said today it has agreed to sell most of its northern California office space - four buildings and a vacant new development, all in Oakland - for $270 million in cash, plus $96 million in debt, plus a $40 million payment in 2010. Release here.
Lazard Frères & Co. acted as financial advisor to Brandywine, and CB Richard Ellis helped sell the properties.
The sale leaves Brandywine, a Philadelphia-centric company that went moderately national in the late building boom, with around 550,000 square feet of offices in Northern California, plus two future development sites.
The candidates are both skeptical about Lockheed Martin's F-22 fighter and the Army's $159 billion Future Combat Systems, a modernization plan jointly managed by Boeing and SAIC Inc. Lockheed and Boeing are major Philadelphia-area employers, though most of those weapons systems are being developed elsewhere.
``When you get beyond the issue of the war in Iraq, Senator McCain and Senator Obama sound remarkably similar on many defense issues,'' Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia, tells Bloomberg. Both oppose big Cold War-type weapon systems and favor small-conflict support programs like the Littoral Combat Ship for Marine landings.
Prager’s group has purchased over $200 million in office real estate, including properties owned by Liberty Property Trust and Brandywine Realty Trust, in Bucks, Berks, Dauphin, Lehigh, and other eastern Pennsylvania counties since early 2007, Hines said.
Tenants at 2621 include Comcast, PayChex, Texas Instruments and PJM Interconnection.
Vanguard Group, the largest mutual fund company and Chester County's biggest employer with around 10,000 workers at its Malvern headquarters and nearby offices,, has set its 2007 Partnership Plan dividend at $101.60 per point, up 10.5% from last year's $91.95, reports longtime Vanguard-watcher Daniel P. Wiener, publisher of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors and http://www.adviserinvestments.com/ . (UPDATE: Vanguard spokeswoman Linda Wolahan confirmed Wiener's number.)
Wiener notes Vanguard Chairman John Brennan had wanted to boost the points to $100 by 2005, but had to slow down after a decline in the investment business forced him to cut the rate in 2002. Point values show improved sales, investment performance and productivity, Vanguard says.
"The Vanguard Partnership Plan's dividend has grown at an annualized rate of 15.9% since the Plan's inception in 1984, making it a darned good source of income growth for Vanguard's top managers," Wiener added. "By contrast, an investment in Vanguard's 500 Index fund would have compounded at a 12.4% rate."
The plan boosts Vanguard incomes by up to 30 percent for veteran employees, though top executives can get a lot more, and new employees get less, Wiener writes. He estimates Vanguard chief John Brennan's yearly compensation, which isn't publicly reported, at "between $6.5 million and $11.5 million." (UPDATE: Vanguard won't confirm that.)
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