Archive: June, 2009
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
The United States is in the fourth year of its housing slump, and the commercial building sector is down as well.
So why does DuPont Co. think now is the right time to open its first design studios, including one in Philadelphia, to showcase its Corian solid surfaces?
It’s hoping to create buzz - and new business - for a 42-year-old product primarily known for its use in countertops. To that end, the Wilmington chemical giant has opened studios in Milan, New York and now Philadelphia to show designers and architects how Corian can be used as a design material.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
The region’s economy has reacted to the recession more like it’s had a tank of bad gasoline rather than it needs a new transmission.
That’s my interpretation of a new quarterly barometer of the health of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas by the Brookings Institution.
San Antonio, Texas, was the strongest metro area, while Detroit was the weakest, according to Brookings’ MetroMonitor report. Philadelphia was the 37th strongest, which won’t cause anyone to adopt it as the new economic development slogan.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Forget staycations. Campus Philly wants to turn more newly minted college grads into working Philadelphia residents.
That’s a tall order during a recession that has mowed down 6 million jobs nationwide.
A National Association of Colleges & Employers survey indicates less than 20 percent of 2009 grads who have applied for a job have one in hand. Two years ago, more than half had one by graduation.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Often, what is billed as a $300 million strategic partnership between Big Pharma and a small drug developer winds up in an amicable split years down the road with substantially less cash having changed hands.
While large drug companies continue to cast their nets to scoop up promising compounds in the hope of replacing sales lost to generic competition, it’s far from a frenzy. And they’re quick to cut off support to emerging pharmaceutical or biotechnology firms whose therapies fail in the clinical or regulatory process.
That’s what makes yesterday’s announcement by Fort Washington’s Vitae Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim so interesting. The two agreed to team up on new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
The battle for control of the maker of Cold-Eeze lozenges is over.
A federal judge in Philadelphia lifted a temporary restraining order on Friday that was the last thing keeping Quigley Corp.’s chairman, president and CEO in charge.
Guy J. Quigley, who founded the Doylestown company 20 years ago, resigned on Friday more than three weeks after losing a proxy contest led by a New York investor, Ted Karkus.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Guy J. Quigley, chairman, president and CEO of Quigley Corp., who founded the maker of the Cold-Eeze line of cold remedies 20 years ago, resigned Friday afternoon.
The Doylestown company was the subject of a proxy battle this spring led by New York investor Ted Karkus. His dissident slate of seven directors won a majority of the votes cast at the May 20 annual meeting.
Quigley’s chief operating officer, Charles A. Phillips, and accounting operations manager, Wendy D. Quigley, also resigned.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Kevin M. Blakely started as CEO of the Center City-based Risk Management Association just before the subprime-mortgage turbulence had graduated to crisis status.
In an interview in July 2007, he said that banks had “come a long way in developing new methods of modeling risk, but we haven’t been through a major business cycle yet when these methods have been tested.”
Well, now, we have. After the hundreds of billions spent on bank bailouts, you probably know how effective those methods were.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Repeat after me: The Obama administration will not cap executive compensation and will not tell companies how to pay their senior managers.
That is, it won’t unless your company got financial help through one of the federal government’s alphabet-soup bailout programs. Those who took multibillions of dollars will have to answer a federal “compensation czar.”
And in general, isn’t that how it should be?
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Can you stand to listen to one more economic forecast?
I’m all for transparency and making as much information available as possible. But at times, the daily downpour of new statistics, revisions and forecasts swamps me with information overload instead of providing clarity about the hole the U.S. economy finds itself in.
Such is tea-leaf reading in a media-saturated, hyper-caffeinated world.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Marvin Samson had wanted to be a pharmacist, but he couldn’t afford to go to pharmacy school.
Instead, he went to Temple University at night to get his bachelor’s in chemistry. Samson went on to start two generic injectable drug manufacturers that were eventually acquired by bigger firms.
The first was Elkins-Sinn Inc. in 1967. Now owned by Baxter Healthcare Inc., the business remains one of the biggest U.S. makers of generic injectables.
Mike Armstrong blogs about Philadelphia corporations and business-related topics. Contact him at 215-854-2980.
Reach Mike at marmstrong@phillynews.com.
