Archive: June, 2008
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
There’s a reason companies rush to be the first to market with a product.
You can establish your brand and build a lead that competitors may not be able to trim.
Merck & Co. Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC spent years developing vaccines to prevent cervical cancer. Merck’s Gardasil won approval from the Food and Drug Administration two years ago.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
When A.C. Moore Arts & Crafts Inc. announced on June 10 that its chief financial officer had resigned, the retailer said only that Marc Katz would be pursuing a "career opportunity in the private equity sector."
Thanks to a regulatory filing today, we know what that job is.
Katz has been named executive vice president and chief accounting officer of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp., the South Jersey-based retailer of outwear and other apparel. He joins the company July 9.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
A former Bell Atlantic executive who served on the boards of several local companies died over the weekend.
Airgas Inc., Charming Shoppes Inc. and Triumph Group Inc. all issued press releases today expressing their sorrow over the unexpected death of William O. Albertini on June 28. He was 64.
Albertini, who'd been chief financial officer of Bell Atlantic from 1991 through 1997, had joined the board of Bensalem-based Charming Shoppes in 2003. He'd been a director at Triumph, a Wayne-based maker of aircraft components, since 1999.
Bala Cynwyd-based vodka maker Central European Distribution Corp. has been in high spirits lately.
As the fiercely bearish Dow shed another 107 points on Friday, shares of the company, which distributes 700 brands of alcoholic beverages in Poland, rose nearly 7 percent, to close at $74.72.
The stock has returned 117 percent in the past 12 months. There’s something for shareholders to drink to.
After yesterday’s 358-point haircut on the Dow, how low can the stock market go?
Economists answer as follows: Much lower. No lower. Impossible to tell.
Take your pick. It all depends on who’s talking.
Will rising material, energy and transportation costs undo the decades-long shift of manufacturing away from U.S. shores?
Some manufacturers are starting to think it’s happening — at least in some of the heavy-industry categories.
“You’re going to have another boom in the United States. It’ll happen no matter what people do, just because of the economics of it.”
Is Wachovia Corp. looking for a suitor?
That was part of the buzz yesterday as the bank — which holds the lion’s share of deposits in the Philadelphia region — acknowledged hiring Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for advice on its tattered loan portfolio.
The move could lead to a big loan mark-down and sell-off, but Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia was mum on details. Naturally, that left everyone free to speculate.
Say “cybercities” and many folks imagine those goofy online worlds peopled by impossibly attractive and slutty cartoon avatars.
The thought of an offline cybercity seems quaint, like a concept from the roaring dot-com era of the 1990s.
But it pops up today in a report from New Jersey-based AeA, a technology industry association, on the status of the high-tech industry in 60 U.S. metropolitan areas — cybercities — including our region.
Lithium Technology Corp., the Plymouth Meeting battery maker, boasted last week that a hybrid muscle car powered by one of its big vehicle batteries had “passed the finish line” at one of Europe’s most popular round-the-clock endurance races.
“Running on electrical energy alone in front of 200,000 spectators,” the company crowed, proved that “hybrid technology does have a future in motor racing.”
Not so fast.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Over the years, I’ve asked lots of companies how much money they make.
The publicly held ones have to tell you, but not the private firms. Most would rather not because they don’t want their competition to know.
A bill introduced into City Council June 12 would require all businesses that pay the business privilege tax to disclose all sorts of information, including their net income and taxes paid.
Mike Armstrong blogs about Philadelphia corporations and business-related topics. Contact him at 215-854-2980.
Reach Mike at marmstrong@phillynews.com.
