Anyone who follows public companies should be familiar with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR online database.

Earnings reports, acquisitions and stock offerings are all disclosed in various filings. But since mid-March, the online system has also been providing more information about the financings of privately held companies.

To protect investors, federal and state securities regulators require any company selling securities privately to register with them or to notify them that their offering is exempt from registration.

Companies raising money privately may file notice of an exempt offering using the SEC’s Form D. While companies have been filing them on paper with the SEC for years, it’s only been since mid-March that the agency has required that the form be submitted electronically, making it available over EDGAR for the world to see.

The capital raised by companies filing a Form D may come from venture capital or private-equity firms, or wealthy individuals. And the sums can be quite large.

A recent report by the SEC’s Inspector General’s office said 20,021 Form D filings were made in 2008. It estimated that those exempt offerings raised $609 billion of capital last year.

Among the local firms that have filed Form Ds recently are drug developer Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc., team-apparel maker Boathouse Sports, medical-device maker Neuronetics Inc. and Internet video provider RedLasso Corp.

Form D lists a company’s address, executives and directors, the industry sector in which it operates, and a range of its annual revenues. But the meat of the form is on Line 13 where a company discloses how much it raised.

The most recent Form D filing I read for a local company was by Xanitos Inc., of Radnor. Organized in 2008, the company is described as being in the business-services industry with revenues of $5 million to $25 million.

Xanitos’ Form D states it raised $4,175,525 from 17 investors in late July. I’d never heard of Xanitos, but I know of its CEO, Graeme Crothall, a serial entrepreneur who’s built three hospital housekeeping services companies.

I couldn’t reach Crothall by phone, but the Xanitos Web site describes the story of how he’s trying to build his fourth firm focused on keeping hospital rooms clean.

Sure, it's summer, but entrepreneurs generally spend more time on their business plans than vacation plans.

So grab your business cards and smart phone because the National Black MBA Association will bring its Entrepreneurial Institute City Tour to Philadelphia on Saturday.

The workshop will have two tracks - one geared toward those looking to start a business, the other for established small-business owners in a growth phase.

It will be held at the Philadelphia Marriott, 1201 Market St., on Aug. 29 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Cost is $20 for students, $30 for members and $40 for non-members.

Garland Thompson, president of the Philadelphia chapter, said there will be sessions on professional development, getting access to capital and sales strategies. (Full agenda here.) The local chapter has more than 400 members.

Also, Janice Bryant Howroyd, founder and CEO of Act-1 Group Inc. , a Torrance, Calif. employment agency that's grown into one of the nation's biggest, will be the keynote speaker.

The group would like you to pre-register on its Web site here, but Thompson said that those who don't can show up and pay at the door.

It's the last stop for a program, sponsored by State Farm Insurance, that kicked off in Chicago on May 30 and went on to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston.

The number of "problem" institutions in the banking industry's keeps growing.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation today released a tally of 416 troubled banks as of June 30, up from 305 at the end of March.

That statistic is contained the FDIC's Quarterly Banking Profile, released this morning. Regulators say the number of troubled banks is highest it's been since June 30, 1994, when 434 institutions on the list.

The agency never identifies who's on the list of troubled banks. Generally, we find out who the worst of the worst are Friday nights when the FDIC swoops in and takes over a failed bank.

And for some perspective, the FDIC insures deposits at 8,246 banks and savings associations. So the percentage of "problem" banks is currently 5 percent of all institutions. Still, 81 banks have failed so far this year, and banking analysts project another 200 to 300 banks will failed before the current cycle is over.

(For those keeping score, the FDIC said there were 252 problem institutions at the end of 2008, up from 76 at the end of 2007.)

Add Pennsylvania’s coal-mine operators to those in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky who oppose the climate-change legislation pending in Washington.

The 26 member companies of the Pennsylvania Coal Association voted unanimously at its Aug. 19 annual board meeting to oppose the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House of Representatives and is before the Senate.

While environmental groups have been critical of some of the amendments made as being too favorable to the coal industry, the mine operators and mine workers union see the legislation as the biggest threat to their livelihood.

Let’s face it, the coal industry will have a tough time rallying public support for its position.

However, it does wield some daunting statistics to make its case, such as 56 percent of the electricity generated in Pennsylvania comes from coal. In Ohio and Kentucky, coal accounts for more than 90 percent.

What could Pennsylvania, the fourth-largest coal producing state, adopt to replace it? Solar, wind, nuclear, perhaps. But can Pennsylvania power producers really build enough of those by 2025 to reduce its dependence on coal?

“There are no short-term alternatives for coal as a source of electricity,” said George Ellis, president of the Pennsylvania Coal Association.

Coal is not a clean energy, so it’s no wonder that the climate-change bill seeks to limit its use. But the coal industry argues that it’s a plentiful energy source at a time when politicians are speechifying about the need to the United States to gain its “energy independence.” That’s independence from foreign oil, not foreign coal.

So what’s left of King Coal has spoken in Harrisburg. We’ll see if anyone other than Sen. Arlen Specter and Sen. Bob Casey hears their grumbling in Washington.

Quotable

There’s no guarantee with turnarounds. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, or they work and sometimes they don’t work as well as you’d like.

- James P. Fogarty, CEO of Charming Shoppes Inc., yesterday discussing the ongoing overhaul of its Fashion Bug retail chain.

The most memorable images generated by any assemblage of world leaders gathered to discuss economic issues are the street scenes outside the meeting.

Protesters march, often in creative costumes. Their signs tell the world to just say “no” to capitalism, greed and globalization.

It will be the same next month when the leaders of Group of 20 nations put Pittsburgh on the world stage. Organizers of the event would like the location to stand as a symbol of the rise, fall and rise of capitalism in Western Pennsylvania.

But this will be no sight-seeing trip. The 10-year-old G-20 was born out of financial crises in the late 1990s. As the current financial mess spread worldwide last fall, the first meeting of the leaders of the G-20 nations took place in Washington Nov. 15.

Up till then, the annual G-20 summits were all financial, economic wonkiness organized and attended by the finance ministers and central bankers of 19 nations and the European Union. Nothing like a global recession to get their bosses’ attention, right?

And those leaders wanted action, not more studies. So at the close of the Washington meeting, the leaders of the G-20 (who are called the L-20) issued an action plan with 44 things that need to change to make sure a global crisis does not happen again.

Those include increasing the financial resources of the International Monetary Fund and enhancing accounting standards for the “valuation of complex, illiquid products.”

If you read the action list, you’ll realize why the protesters of globalization have a more memorable message. The L-20’s issues are about as exciting as a sewage treatment authority agenda.

Still, these 20 “systemically significant” nations account for two-thirds of the world’s population, and that’s why protesters bother. It’s the one place where the old guard economies of Europe and the United States deal as equals with the rapidly rising BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations.

That’s why thousands of protesters converged on London for the second L-20 summit in April. And they’re getting ready for Round Three in Pittsburgh. We already know the street theater will make better YouTube video. More important will be what actions, if any, the L-20 agree to pursue this time.

You and I call the Montenay Energy Resources operation near the Blue Route in Plymouth Township a “trash-to-steam” plant.

Covanta Holding Corp. calls it an “energy-from-waste” facility.

To-may-to, to-mah-to. Both are apt descriptions for an incinerator that runs day and night, burning household municipal and commercial waste to produce steam and generate electricity.

But for Covanta, Montenay represents something else: a major expansion of its holdings in the United States and our region.

The Fairfield, N.J., company yesterday completed the purchase of the Montgomery County plant and five others from Veolia Environnement, based in Paris. In addition, Covanta picked up from Veolia the Abington Transfer Station on Fitzwatertown Road in Upper Dublin.

The Montenay plant, on Conshohocken Road, can process up to 1,216 tons of trash per day and has the capacity to generate 32 megawatts of electricity.

Since 2005, Covanta has run an even bigger trash-to-steam plant in Chester. Covanta Delaware Valley can handle up to 5,700 tons of trash per day and generate 75 megawatts of electricity at maximum output.

Plus, Covanta closed in May on its purchase of two transfer stations in Philadelphia from Republic Services Inc. for $17.5 million. Together, those operations can handle up to 4,500 tons of trash per day.

Wind farms and solar arrays get all the attention in the renewable-energy sector, but the Waxman-Markey energy bill that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June lumps the nation’s 90 energy-from-waste plants in that category, as long as they meet certain criteria.

Covanta CEO Anthony J. Orlando has said those criteria might mean the company will have to spend $50 million on its 44 existing plants to meet new emissions standards.

Depending on how the energy bill winds up, there may be no rush to build new plants that were protested with regularity by environmentalists and community activists during the ’80s.

If so, Covanta will likely turn its attention to a market where several hundred energy-from-waste plants are expected to be built over the next two decades: China.

Activist investors who agitate for change at public companies sometimes make a splash. Other times, they get dunked.

Charming Shoppes Inc. was the target of activist investors in 2008. They demanded and got board representation and a change in strategy at the Bensalem women’s apparel retailer. Over the last year, the owner of the Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug chains has restructured.

Looking at which local stocks have done the best since the S&P 500 index hit a low on March 9, I was surprised to see Charming Shoppes at the top of the list. Its shares, which closed at $5.71 on Friday, have rallied 1,090 percent. Not shabby for a member of the beaten-down retail sector.

An activist investor has had considerably less influence on MedQuist Inc. Its shares are up 296 percent since March 9, but Mark E. Schwarz, who was added to the board of the Mount Laurel electronic medical-transcription company in December 2007, now finds himself back on the outside looking in.

Schwarz is general partner of Newcastle Partners L.P., a Dallas investment group that owned 1.15 million shares, or 3.1 percent of MedQuist, as of July 8.

He resigned as a member of the board Tuesday. But he little choice because MedQuist’s majority owner, CBay Inc., had been seeking to remove Schwarz and another investor from the board since early July.

Schwarz did not go quietly. He sent a letter to the board in which he discussed several disagreements with MedQuist. That letter was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Aug. 20.

“It is particularly offensive to have received a cursory, one-minute phone call from Peter Berger, whereby I was informed that CBay intended to remove me as a director,” Schwarz writes.

(Berger, a MedQuist board member, is a managing director of S.A.C. Private Capital Group L.L.C., which is a major investor in CBay, a holding company with investments in several medical companies.)

“There was not one solitary reason offered as to why this action was being taken,” writes Schwarz, whose firm has owned MedQuist shares for more than five years.

In his letter, Schwarz makes reference to “many related party transactions” between MedQuist and CBay, including certain fee arrangements. The fees would, in effect, provide CBay a “special dividend” that no other MedQuist shareholder would receive, according to Schwarz.

“This whole affair is reflective of the inherently problematic nature of the convoluted ownership structure between CBay and MedQuist,” he writes.

For its part, MedQuist says in the SEC filing that it “elects not to comment on the allegations made by Mr. Schwarz in his letter.”

But here’s a clue why CBay might have wanted Schwarz and Brian O’Donoghue off the board: Both had sued MedQuist’s previous majority owner, Royal Philips Electronics N.V. in June 2008, objecting to the sale of its stake to CBay for $8.25 per share.

The lawsuit was ultimately unsuccessful. Philips closed the sale of its MedQuist stake to CBay Aug. 6, 2008.

MedQuist shares fell 15 percent during Schwarz’s tenure as a director. Shares are up 99 percent since CBay’s purchase.

Annual meeting

Shareholders of Wayne-based Safeguard Scientifics Inc. will gather at the Dolce Valley Forge hotel, 301 W. DeKalb Pike, King of Prussia, Friday at 8 a.m. for its annual shareholders meeting.

Besides the usual election of directors and approval of its choice of KPMG L.L.P. as independent accounting firm for 2009, Safeguard is asking its shareholders to approve increasing the number of shares of common stock reserved for its equity compensation plan by 7 million, to 13 million shares.

Earnings

Wednesday: Charming Shoppes

Thursday: Dollar Financial, Toll Bros.

The recession may have ended in June.

At least, that’s the earliest month that the economists at IHS Global Insight think the U.S. economy bottomed and began a slow recovery.

But the Lexington, Mass., firm reiterated on a conference call yesterday that the consumer is in bad shape and that poses a serious drag on economic growth.

“The consumer is the weak link in this recovery,” said Nigel Gault, its chief U.S. economist.

The federal “cash for clunkers” rebate program has succeeded in giving a temporary boost to sales of new cars and trucks, he said. But the program may have hurt other retail spending.

Consumer sentiment remains in recession territory, Gault said, and it has been moving sideways for a year.

All of that is to be expected given the massive loss of wealth suffered during the recession, the staggering debt load accumulated during the last expansion, the sharp decline in personal income, and the ongoing loss of jobs.

Only when employment begins growing again does Gault expect to see improvement in consumer spending, which drives about two-thirds of the U.S. economy.

When will that be? IHS Global Insight doesn’t expect to see employment growth until mid-2010.

Inside the lines

With the prime crayon years between 5 and 9, Crayola L.L.C. commands only a brief period of our lives before pens, pencils and keypads become our writing implements of choice.

Crayola has been trying to extend its hold on us with digital products, such as a Wii videogame and a digital camera scrapbooking kit.

But even as the Internet consumes more of our attention, Mike Perry, president and CEO of Crayola, said kids aren’t about to give up on those colorful sticks of wax.

“Something magical happens when a kid is able to pick up a crayon or marker and just simply create,” Perry said.

(See more from Perry on Thursday's webcast.)

When a company has raised $22 million in venture capital and needs to raise $25 million more, what good is getting only $250,000?

It means a lot to Stephen Roth, chief executive officer of Immune Control Inc.

The West Conshohocken pharmaceutical company was one of seven area firms to receive a total $1.2 million in investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. (See a related post on the PhillyInc blog for the other firms.)

Normally, the Ben Franklin program provides funds to young firms before they raise venture capital. But there’s been nothing normal about this down cycle for the venture-capital industry nationally.

“I’ve never seen it worse,” said Roth, who founded Neose Technologies Inc. in 1990 with intellectual property he’d developed at the University of Pennsylvania. He’d raised venture capital for Neose before it went public in 1996.

Many venture firms are choosing to fund only companies that have revenues, Roth said. “They’re taking the venture out of venture capital.”

Started in 2001, Immune Control is another homegrown start-up built around research from the Drexel University College of Medicine. In a nutshell, the firm is trying to control immune-cell activity using compounds that target serotonin receptors.

But as the Wall Street Journal first reported, it ran into a problem with its clinical trials of a multiple myeloma treatment: It could not find enough cancer patients.

The American Cancer Society estimates about 20,850 cases of multiple myeloma will be diagnosed this year, making it a “relatively uncommon cancer.” And Immune Control was competing for patients with Celgene Corp. and Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., which had ongoing studies of their own treatments.

So Immune Control halted work on multiple myeloma this summer and will pursue development of serotonin antagonists to treat asthma and psoriasis, Roth said.

But developing drugs remains an expensive process, and Immune Control will have to line up more funding, perhaps through a partnership with a large pharmaceutical company, Roth said.

Until then, Roth said he’s grateful for the support of the Ben Franklin program, which invested $500,000 in Immune Control in 2003.