For Rob Enslin, there could have been a better time than February to start as the new president of SAP America.

As we know now, the U.S. economy shrank at an annualized rate of 6.1 percent during the first quarter. That was worse than economists had expected.

The German business-software maker that Enslin works for also had a challenging first quarter. Yesterday, SAP AG reported net income fell 16 percent to 204 million euros (or $269 million) compared with 242 million euros. Total revenue decreased 3 percent.

Enslin, 47, got the job of overseeing all SAP businesses in North America about a month after the company announced that it would freeze salaries and cut more than 3,000 jobs worldwide by year’s end.

Given that SAP software and systems are used in 26 different industries, Enslin has seen how the global downturn has affected all parts of the economy.

When I met with him at SAP’s Newtown Square headquarters recently, Enslin said chemicals, financial services and commodities have been under particular stress.

But he was also optimistic about business conditions. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve indicated that it, too, sees signs that the worst of the recession may be over.

Before his recent return to the U.S., Enslin had been chief operating officer of SAP’s Fast Growth markets for its Global Field Operations unit. That put him in the blast furnace of some sizzling economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and other nations generally tagged as “emerging.”

“Emerging is a strange word,” said Enslin. “These countries have emerged.”

Still, implementing an SAP enterprise resource planning system can take six to 12 months. The financial shockwave that hit in September caused boards of directors everywhere to hesitate to greenlight such massive technology transformations.

Now, Enslin said, the economic-stimulus plan holds potential for SAP in areas such as construction, energy and emissions control.

And if one aim of all that spending is to encourage a more sustainable global economy, Enslin has a new building in Newtown Square he’d like to show off.

Tomorrow: SAP’s green headquarters.

Swine flu has not found its way to Philadelphia, but companies and other organizations here are implementing precautionary measures to manage the potential risks.

(Update: The Pennsylvania Health Department on Monday evening reported the state's first probable case of swine flu in a child in Philadelphia. The child is no longer ill, and authorities said the case has not been confirmed.)

Today, paper company SCA Americas Inc. said it had instituted a series of measures because it employs 2,500 people at four factories and one administrative office in Mexico.

The Philadelphia-based unit of a Swedish corporation said it had doctors on-site at each plant and "made a full checkup" of every worker. It distributed more than 4,000 face masks and that employees are now required to wear them in the plants. Cafeterias, restrooms and other areas are being cleaned with chlorine and antibacterial soap every two hours.

In addition, SCA Americas has asked its employees to avoid all non-essential travel to and within Mexico "for the foreseeable future." That mirrors what health authorities have been saying.

(For more about what SCA Americas does, check out Maria Panartis' story that appeared in the Inquirer April 19.)

The Association for Corporate Wellness had to cancel its meeting that was scheduled for today at PSEG's headquarters in Newark, N.J. This group is made up of medical and wellness executives from employers throughout the region.

Bill Lacy, president and treasurer of the organization, said PSEG simply couldn't have 60 people coming from the outside world to their headquarters at a time when the utility is taking steps to prepare for any swine flu-related effects. Having worked in corporate risk management for a utility, Lacy said the move was an appropriate one to take.

Prevention is the name of the game in corporate wellness. So canceling the meeting "falls in the spirit of prevention," Lacy said.

Anyone else hearing about steps companies or organizations are taking?

DuPont Co. shareholders will be asked to vote on only one stockholder-sponsored resolution today compared with five last year.

The chemical giant will once again hold its annual meeting at the DuPont Theatre, 1007 Market St., Wilmington, at 10:30 a.m.

The lone shareholder resolution seeks to give shareholders a “say on pay” on how DuPont compensates its top management. A similar measure in last year’s proxy statement did not pass.

DuPont reported that the 2008 say-on-pay resolution received 275.2 million votes “for,” 344.5 million “against” and 25.9 million “absentions.”

(To find the results of proxy voting, check the Form 10-Q document that follows a company’s annual meeting. Usually, you’ll find a breakdown of the vote totals below the quarterly financials.)

Last year, DuPont faced proposals to separate the positions of chairman and CEO, to require a global warming report, to amend the company’s human rights policy, and to create a committee to focus on the impact on communities of plant closures. None of them passed, and none will be on the ballot today.

It’s pretty routine for companies to oppose shareholdersponsored resolutions, and DuPont is recommending investors vote against this year’s say-on-pay measure sponsored by William Steiner, of Piermont, N.Y., who owns 3,300 DuPont shares.

Even though management tends to prevail, these votes are no longer the slam dunks they once were.

Shareholders of Apple Inc. just won the right to vote on the pay of the executives named in its proxy. The measure was approved by 52 percent of the votes cast.

More meetings

Speaking of annual shareholder meetings, three others are being held today:

* EResearchTechnology Inc., the Philadelphia provider of cardiac safety products and services for clinical trials, at its corporate headquarters at 1818 Market St., Philadelphia, at 10 a.m.

* TF Financial Corp., the Newtown bank holding company, at Holy Family University in Newtown at 9:30 a.m.

* USA Technologies Inc., the Malvern provider of vending machine technology, at the Chester Valley Golf Club in Malvern at 10 a.m.

Thanks to the concentration of pharmaceutical companies and medical research here, the Philadelphia region creates new life-sciences companies all the time.

Every start-up or spin-off starts full of promise and expectations for its technology. What distinguishes some is the amount of capital they raise or the management and scientific talent they attract.

One King of Prussia biotechnology firm yesterday added a “rock star.” Trevena Inc. named Robert R. Ruffolo Jr., the retired president of R&D at Collegeville-based Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to its seven-member board of directors.

Trevena, which raised $24 million in venture capital 13 months ago, is working on treatments for cardiovascular and central nervous systems disorders.

Its technology is licensed from Duke University Medical Center and based on research from the labs of Robert J. Lefkowitz and Howard A. Rockman.

In a statement, Ruffolo called the work underway at Trevena “tremendously exciting” and praised the management team as “first rate.” Trevena CEO Maxine Gowen had been the former head of GlaxoSmithKline’s Center of Excellence for External Drug Discovery.

Trevena currently has 21 employees, said company spokesman Alastair Southwell.

Ruffolo, who confessed in a 2005 profile in the Inquirer to playing in a garage band, also said Trevena was the first biotech board seat he’s accepted since retiring from Wyeth less than a year ago.

Quotable

At first I was disappointed that I was not returning to Blank Rome, a firm I cherish and helped build. But we all close and open chapters in our lives every day and I look forward to starting my next chapter with Cozen O’Connor.

- David Girard-diCarlo, the former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, in a statement about returning to join the Philadelphia law firm of Cozen O’Connor rather than the firm he ran for more than 20 years.

Exelon Corp., the Chicago-based company that owns Peco, will hold its annual shareholders meeting at Peco corporate headquarters at 2301 Market St. Tuesday, starting at 9:30 a.m.

Here's a link to the proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Outside of one shareholder-sponsored resolution asking for Exelon to prepare a "global warming" report, the meeting is unlikely to generate too many sparks. Now NRG Energy Inc.'s meeting on May 14 could.

Exelon has been waging a hostile bid for the Princeton company. And it has offered up a slate of four nominees to NRG's board as part of a proxy fight. So far, both sides have dug in their heels, pressing either on offense or defense.

Will the tussle be mentioned at Exelon's annual meeting on Tuesday?

A King of Prussia start-up drug discovery company called Trevena Inc. has added the retired president of R&D Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to its seven-member board of directors.

Robert R. Ruffolo Jr. joined the board of the privately held company after having been a member of its scientific advisory board only since January.

Little biotech often looks to land expertise from Big Pharma, and that's what Trevena has done. The board of Trevena, which raised $24 million in venture capital 13 months ago, had been composed of four of its venture investors, one Duke University representative, and its CEO, Maxine Gowen.

Trevena is working on treatments for cardiovascular and central nervous systems disorders. Its technology is licensed from Duke University Medical Center and based on research from the labs of Robert J. Lefkowitz and Howard A. Rockman.

In a statement, Ruffolo called the "science underway" at Trevena "tremendously exciting" and praised the management team as "first rate." He also said it was the first biotech board seat he's accepted since retiring from Wyeth less than a year ago.

Trevena currently has 21 employees, according to company spokesman Alastair Southwell.

Businesses generally aren’t clamoring to set up shop in Philadelphia.

But more than 300 start-ups from all over the country were ready, willing and eager to spend this summer in West Philadelphia to be part of a “business accelerator” program.

DreamIt Ventures held its inaugural “boot camp” for entrepreneurs last year. It was three months of intense work for 11 companies that holed up in donated space at the University City Science Center.

Each was matched with a mentor, received lots of professional advice, and was egged on to turn their great ideas into what DreamIt hopes will be great companies one day.

Of those 11, four have raised outside funding, including Vuzit, a Philadelphia company that has an online-document viewing technology. DreamIt co-founder Michael Levinson said that two companies are now dormant. The others are still plugging away and trying to raise capital.

DreamIt itself is a start-up, and one that has attracted a fair amount of buzz from technologensia such as the TechCrunch blog. Levinson said the firm received more than double the applications for the summer boot camp than it did last year. The quality of applicants was much higher, he said, and that made picking the final 11 that much harder.

One of them is an Arizona start-up called Notehall. It started an online service where University of Arizona students can buy and sell classroom notes and study guides.

Notehall founder Sean Conway, who graduated from Arizona in 2007, said the site has been operational for seven months and has 10,000 users. (Notehall tells those users that the service is “not a substitute for missing class.”)

Conway and his team want to take the concept nationwide. So trading the arid Tucson desert for humid West Philadelphia for a few months looks to him like a good way to validate their business model.

The structure of the program remains the same, and DreamIt will own a small piece of these companies, having invested $15,000 to $30,000 in each.

Levinson said the speakers they’ve lined up will be less theoretical, more practical. For example, DreamIt companies will be hearing from experts from Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com about tools they could use to build their businesses.

Also new is Steve Barsh, who joined as a managing partner of DreamIt after serving as a mentor last year. He’d started and sold a software company to MCI Communications and now teaches at the Wharton School. His enthusiasm when he talks about entrepreneurship is infectious.

Looking around the room at the April 17 event kicking off this year’s DreamIt program, Barsh said it was hard to tell we’re in a recession. The place was filled with young entrepreneurs “raring to go to build their companies,” he said.

Already, one of the 11 has attracted some notoriety. Environmental Conscious Organization Inc. , of New York, has created a pizza box that it calls environmentally friendly. The “Green Box” converts into four plates and a storage box for the refrigerator. The notoriety comes courtesy of avid Twitterer Ashton Kutcher, who “tweeted” about ECO’s YouTube video last week.

All I can say is 10 tech companies and a pizza box designer in the new space at the Science Center for 3 months? Sounds like entrepreneurial utopia.

Back as Boss

Rutgers School of Business-Camden has announced the keynote speaker for its commencement ceremony on May 21: Joseph Rigby, president and CEO of Pepco Holdings Inc.

Rigby became CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based electric and gas utility March 1, succeeding Dennis R. Wraase.

Rigby’s also a 1978 graduate of the Rutgers-Camden B-school. He joined Atlantic City Electric, a subsidiary of Pepco, in 1979.

On the Spot

William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, will give the keynote address for the 27th annual Monetary and Trade Conference at Drexel University Thursday at 11:15 a.m.

His topic will be “Saying Good-bye to Too Big to Fail,” referring to the phrase we’ve all heard far too often over the last year.

The conference, which is jointly sponsored by the Global Interdependence Center and Drexel’s LeBow College of Business, will present several other speeches with suitably gloomy titles, such as “Searching for a Bottom” and “Creative Destruction in the Banking Industry: What’s Left and What’s Next.”

But Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist for Vineland-based Cumberland Advisors, looks to fire a contrarian salvo with his speech, “Are Things Really That Bad?”

To register for the conference, contact the nonprofit Global Interdependence Center at 215-898-9453 or online at www.interdependence.org. Cost is $50 for members and $70 for non-members.

Earnings

Today: Universal Health Services;

Tuesday: Alliance Bancorp, Bryn Mawr Bank, Carpenter Technology, Central European Distribution, Environmental Tectonics, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Quaker Chemical, Sun Bancorp, Teleflex, Unisys, Vishay Intertechnology;

Wednesday: Adolor, Brandywine Realty Trust, Dollar Financial, Endo Pharmaceuticals, GSI Commerce, Innovative Solutions & Support, National Penn Bancshares, NutriSystem, SAP, Sunoco Logistics, ViroPharma;

Thursday: Abington Bancorp, Advanta, Amerigas Partners, CDI, Cigna, Comcast, eResearchTechnology, ICT Group, Nobel Learning Communities, PMA Capital, Parke Bancorp, Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, TF Financial, Triumph Group, UGI, West Pharmaceutical Services;

Friday: Dorman Products, Harleysville National, PPL, Sterling Banks.

Write enough columns and you’ll find that readers often aren’t sponges but mirrors.

The same column can provoke feedback from just as many readers who agree with your argument as those who think you’re off your rocker.

So I was taken aback when a recent column provoked an overwhelmingly negative reaction. E-mails, typed letters, voice-mail messages - people registered their strong disagreement with what I thought was my point.

In a column that ran April 10, I questioned why a public company should financially support a personal charitable donation made by its chief executive officer.

It involved Alan B. Miller, founder and CEO of Universal Health Services Inc., who agreed three years ago to make a sizable donation to his alma mater, the College of William and Mary, to fund construction of a new business-school building. The board of the King of Prussia hospital company subsequently approved what it called a “special bonus” of $5 million to support his gift.

The bonus has been disclosed properly in the company’s proxy statement ever since, and the compensation committee provides several reasons for its paying the bonus.

In my opinion, the bonus was unnecessary. But in trying to make that point, I not only wasn’t clear, some of the language I used created impressions among readers that I didn’t intend.

First off, the headline was “Philanthropy using OPM.” I winced when I saw the headline the next morning, because the acronym for “other people’s money” was a staple of The Inquirer’s coverage of the corruption trial of former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo.

In Philadelphia, the phrase OPM now equals felonious behavior, even though business and government would grind to a halt without access to other people’s money.

It’s standard journalistic practice that reporters don’t write their own headlines. I didn’t write that one, but headline writers take their cues from the actual words of the column. And I’d created the environment for it to be written.

Several readers cited Fumo’s name in their messages to me. They believed I was equating Miller’s donation to the ones made by Peco Energy and Verizon to Fumo’s nonprofit Citizen’s Alliance for Better Neighborhoods. I had no such intention. Fumo’s name doesn’t appear in the column at all.

A couple of readers wondered why I was questioning Miller’s generosity. If you knew him, one said, you’d change your tune.

Well, I don’t know Alan Miller. I only know of him. He started Universal Health Services in 1978 and has been its only CEO ever since. In an era when CEOs last about as long as NFL running backs, that’s unheard of.

Under Miller, Universal Health Services has grown into one of the nation’s biggest for-profit hospital corporations with 127 hospitals and behavioral health centers. For-profit hospital companies come and go, but Miller’s has not only endured but thrived.

It was ranked No. 467 on this year’s Fortune 500 list. Only 13 other local companies that file their financials with the Securities and Exchange Commission are bigger.

But bigger doesn’t mean much without profits. Universal Health Services generated net income of $199.4 million, or $3.93 a share, on revenue of $5.02 billion in 2008.

Over the last decade, Universal Health Services’ shares have risen 61 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has declined 36 percent. Miller, who’s a major stockholder in his company, has built a fortune. And I applaud any entrepreneur who can turn his start-up into a giant.

However, I questioned (and still do) the wisdom of the board of directors in approving a special bonus of $5 million to support Miller’s gift to his alma mater.

Unfortunately, readers tended to interpret my complaint as a comment on Miller’s apparent lack of philanthropy. That was not my intent.

When I talked with Alan Miller on the phone 10 days after the column ran, it was clear that my words had hurt him. He was uncomfortable having to defend his personal contributions when he makes little effort to publicize them in the first place. (The amount of his donation to William and Mary hasn’t been disclosed.)

Besides supporting various local cultural organizations, Miller said he made a point of paying back those institutions in his background that helped him become the success he is today. He got a scholarship to attend William and Mary, a college that he says he never could have afforded.

Now that he can afford much in life, he’s been giving back. My column indelicately implied that he was doing so only with help from the company he runs.

I was trying to make a point about executive pay and corporate governance. I made it badly.

Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable is all well and good as a journalistic mantra. But I employed the literary skills of a logger rather than a surgeon.
 

It doesn’t take a college degree to understand that the high dropout rate in Philadelphia’s schools is bad for the city’s economic competitiveness.

Employers constantly complain that job applicants they see don’t have the skills they need. That includes high school and college graduates. Dropouts? Forget it.

As well-intentioned as it sounds, simply telling students “stay in school” isn’t cutting it.

Thanks to a new study by Northeastern University, I suggest we appeal to their greed: “Stay in school, make more money.”

The study, released by the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, determined a high school graduate in Philadelphia earns almost twice the lifetime earnings of a high school dropout. That’s $870,600 vs. $457,100.

The mean annual earnings of a dropout in the city were only $9,663. Compare that with the $19,437 for someone with a high-school diploma or $47,613 to someone with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The 77-page study outlines all the costs to society in great detail. But to me, the mercenary message that 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders need to hear over and over is: “You’ll make more money if you graduate.”

Dropouts who think they’ll just get a job often don’t. The study says only 39 percent of dropouts were employed in the city in 2006. That was when the economy was ascendant. Millions of jobs have been wiped out since then.

Another study released yesterday noted Philadelphia boosted its graduation rate by 23.2 percentage points between 1995 and 2005. Impressive progress, but still only 62.1 percent of Philadelphia School District students graduate, according to the report prepared for America’s Promise Alliance.

A lot of things are out of our personal control. Graduating from high school in the richest country on earth should not be one of them.

Quotable

“We’re watching things very closely but will pounce only when the sun, moon and stars align.”

- Peter Carlino, CEO of Penn National Gaming Inc. , the Wyomissing-based operator of racetracks and casinos, told Bloomberg News referring to possible acquisitions of properties on the Las Vegas Strip.