PhillyDeals: Another major firm buys into Pennsylvania's future

Texas Instruments Inc.

yesterday joined cell phone manufacturer

Nokia Corp.

, business-software giant

Oracle Corp

., and optical-components-maker

Finisar Corp.

as a newly minted Pennsylvania employer.

Those high-tech companies weren't lured here with tax breaks. In each case, they bought small Pennsylvania firms and slapped their names over the door.

"This is the way to attract them. If you give incentive grants, they stay as long as the grant. But if they're buying the talent, they stay here," and expand, said Michael D. Burns, managing director for $100-billion-asset Guggenheim Partners' venture capital office in King of Prussia.

Burns' firm made "a very large return" - he won't say how large - by selling its stake in CICLON Semiconductor Device Corp., of Bethlehem, to Texas Instruments. Investors TL Ventures, of Wayne, and Venrock, the Rockefeller family venture fund, also shared in the payout.

CICLON makes high-voltage, low-weight semiconductors for mobile systems. It was spun off from Agere Systems Inc. three years ago by CICLON boss Mark Granahan, who approached Burns and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in search of funding for a new lab.

Guggenheim agreed to help fund a $1.7 million expansion, and the Rendell administration found space in a former Bethlehem Steel research facility on the Lehigh University campus, plus $774,000 in machinery, tax, and "opportunity" grants, said state spokesman Luke Webber.

Texas Instruments plans to keep Granahan and his 50 workers, and it plans to expand the business' new line of power-saving circuits, according to Burns.

That follows, among other recent local tech deals: Nokia's acquisition of Traffic.com Inc., of King of Prussia, and its former owner Navteq Corp.; Finisar's merger with Chalfont-based Optium Corp.; and Oracle's purchase of Primavera Systems Inc., of Bala Cynwyd; Global Knowledge Software L.L.L.C., of King of Prussia, and AdminServer Inc., of Chester. All of these deals closed in the past year.

Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools

, a 28-year-old group that raises money for parish schools in hopes of keeping school taxes low and ensuring a steady supply of educated workers, said it had separated from the

Archdiocese of Philadelphia

and set up an independent nonprofit corporation to keep urban schools open.

BLOCS chairman Michael O'Neill, a King of Prussia developer and mining-company owner, said the group had raised $6 million in the last 18 months and was also giving schools advice in "business methods."

O'Neill said BLOCS helped set up new "flexible-tuition" policies that helped boost enrollment at St. Cyril in East Lansdowne, Our Lady of Lourdes in Overbrook, and St. Martin de Porres in North Philadelphia this year.

Local groups are mulling plans to replace weekly newspapers closed by Yardley-based

Journal Register Co.

State Rep. Mark Cohen, (D., Phila.), who represents neighborhoods that lost coverage when the Olney Times, News Gleaner and Northeast Breeze closed last year, has approached community groups about starting "Your Community Newspaper," which Cohen calls a "nonprofit, nonpolitical" free weekly.

Cohen said that he planned to distribute the papers at churches, stores, and community groups, and that they'll cover neighborhood institutions such as Albert Einstein Hospital and La Salle University. Asked if he expected those institutions, or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, will advertise in or subsidize Your Community News, Cohen said, "It is possible."

Community groups in Northwest Philadelphia, where Journal Register's West Oak Lane Leader, Mount Airy Times Express, and Germantown Courier folded this winter, are also trying to organize a newspaper, said West Mount Airy Neighbors executive director Laura Morris Siena.

Up in Lahaska, the independent, six-year-old Bucks County Herald has been receiving news items that used to go to the Quakertown Free Press, the New Hope Gazette, and the Doylestown Patriot before Journal Register closed them this winter, said editor Bridget Wingert.

m.