Business news in brief

Sun Bancorp Inc., which has executive offices in Mount Laurel, ousted its chief executive, Thomas X. Geisel, effective Dec. 2, after five straight quarterly losses totaling $352.6 million, the bank said Monday after the stock market closed. Sun, which has $3.24 billion assets and $2.75 billion in deposits, said chairman Sidney R. Brown will serve as interim president and CEO until a replacement is selected. Sun's biggest shareholder is Wilbur R. Ross, a prominent private-equity investor who invested in several banks during the financial collapse of several years ago. Geisel attracted attention nationwide in 2009 when he did an about-face and returned federal bailout money shortly after receiving it because of what he called the political nature of the Trouble Asset Relief Program. - Harold Brubaker

Shares of Echo Therapeutics Inc. surged after the small medical technology firm reported positive results for a study of its wireless glucose monitoring system. The company said its device's readings were 97.9 percent accurate. The Philadelphia-based company's technology is designed to help hospital personnel monitor diabetes multiple patients' blood sugar levels around the clock. Echo Therapeutics' CEO said in a statement the company will use the study results to apply for marketing approval in the European Union. Echo shares rose $1.96, or 72.9 percent, to $4.65. The shares had been down more than 74 percent so far this year. - AP

Holt Logistics Corp. said it had agreed to provide stevedoring and terminal services for Bermuda Container Line's weekly Bermuda service starting in the first quarter of next year. Bermuda Container Line, which is owned by Neptune Group Ltd., will move the business from Elizabeth, N.J., to Holt's Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in South Philadelphia, Holt said. The weekly ship to Bermuda carries general supplies, perishable goods, vehicles, and heavy machinery, Holt said. - Harold Brubaker

Drug maker Merck & Co., of Whitehouse Station, N.J., said it increased its quarterly dividend by one cent per share, to 44 cents. Payment will be made Jan. 8 to stockholders of record on Dec. 16. Merck last increased the quarterly dividend a year ago, also by a penny. Shares closed down 8 cents, at $49.58. - Reid Kanaley

Four brothers from Colorado, all graduates of the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, donated $3 million toward a medical education center on the West Philadelphia campus. The brothers, Dennis, Ronald, Christopher, and Jeremy Law, named an auditorium in the Henry A. Jordan M'62 Medical Education Center, which is scheduled to open in 2015, in honor of their parents, Joseph and Loretta Law, Penn said. The Jordan center is being built at the Ruth and Raymond Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. - Harold Brubaker

Negotiators came close but failed to clinch a global free trade deal after more than a decade of talks that could have boosted the world economy by $1 trillion, the head of the World Trade Organization said. Diplomats from the WTO's 159 members were trying to reach an agreement ahead of a summit next week where ministers were to have signed the deal. The negotiations sought to ease the rules of global commerce by cutting red tape to open markets and help develop poorer economies. They also focused on tariff quotas, government incentives for exports and agriculture issues such as subsidies for grain stockpiling. But disputes between major economies such as the United States, the European Union, China, and India bogged down the discussions. - AP

Google Inc.'s Motorola Mobility started selling a cheap smartphone in the United States more than a month ahead of schedule. The company says it was able to produce the Moto G phones faster than expected. The U.S. launch was initially planned for January. The phone starts at $179 without a contract requirement. That compares with $600 or more that people must typically pay for high-end phones without traditional two-year service agreements. With the Moto G, Motorola is trying to offer a device that is closer to what's currently available on leading high-end phones, although it won't work on the faster 4G LTE networks. - AP

U.S. banks earned $36 billion in the July-September quarter, down almost 4 percent from a year ago and their first such decline since the spring of 2009 when the country was still mired in the recession. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the earnings decline came primarily from a $4 billion increase in litigation expenses at a single institution it did not identify. Lower revenue from reduced mortgage activity and lower gains from asset sales also contributed to the decline. Half of the nation's 6,891 insured banking institutions had year-over-year growth in earnings while half reported declines, the FDIC said in its quarterly report. - AP