PhillyDeals: Cell insurers ring up big payday

Before there were cell phones in Philadelphia, the Cherry Hill-born, Main Line-bred Cloetingh brothers, Stephen and Thomas, set up a firm to insure those bulky $3,000 models against getting dropped or stolen.

They went to the city's big insurers for help, recalls Tom Cloetingh. Cigna Corp., which dropped a bundle insuring CB radios during the '70s trucker-talk craze, at first "thought we were nuts." Reliance Insurance Co. showed interest, "but it went nowhere."

They persisted. Yesterday, the Cloetinghs and minority private-equity investor Trident II L.P. agreed to sell their mobile-phone insurance and repair firm, Signal Holdings L.L.C., of Wayne - with 700 workers and $330 million in yearly sales - to specialty insurer Assurant Inc., of New York, for $250 million.

For now, the brothers will stay on as bosses, and 700 workers, including 150 at headquarters and a call center in Wayne, 330 at a busted-phone repair center in York, Pa., and others at four locations around the country, are keeping their jobs, said Assurant spokesman James Sykes. "Our whole objective is to grow this business," he added. Assurant began underwriting Signal contracts in 2000.

It has been a good ride, but a sale was inevitable after Trident (managed by StonePoint Capital, Greenwich, Conn.) bought a stake in 2002, Tom Cloetingh said. "That's the nature of the private-equity beast."

Brandywine Realty Trust's

planned Cira II project in West Philadelphia looks like the new home for up to 1,500

BlackRock Inc.

investment workers now housed at an old

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.

office center in Plainsboro, N.J.

They got the tax breaks. They're still haggling over price.

"That process is progressing pretty quickly," and "the recent extension of the [Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone tax] benefits through 2025 put Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in a very competitive position," Brandywine chief executive officer Gerard Sweeney told investors in his quarterly investor call yesterday.

But in the current economic downturn, "both parties are mindful of the need for solid economics in the deal, a clearly identified financial structure, and flexibility against any future near-term cost fluctuations," he added.

"All these issues are really front and center in our discussions with BlackRock. In the meantime, I think BlackRock continues to fully review their different locational alternatives. And I do think the situation will clarify in the next quarter or two."

BlackRock is expected to lease more than 500,000 square feet, with an option for 100,000 more, in a building that will total about 750,000 square feet - not as big as each Liberty Place tower, but in that league.

For a company earning an estimated $90 million a month, plain-vanilla investment manager BlackRock sure gets a lot of tax breaks.

As we reported earlier this month, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says he will double the company's Wilmington workforce to 600, now that Gov. Ruth Ann Minner has signed a law limiting investment-company taxes.

The Public Broadcasting Service

, which runs TV channels 23 and 52 and other public news and arts programming in New Jersey, will have to cut 70 of 150 jobs by Dec. 1 because of state budget cuts, executive director

Elizabeth Christopherson

told her staff in an e-mail.

Her board feels "great regret" at the cuts, she wrote.

The threatened layoffs follow a controversial proposal by the authority to move the state-owned stations into an independent community foundation. The union representing state TV employees, CWA Local 1032, is fighting the plan, which union organizer Dudley Burdge says would also likely mean watering down the news.

The state TV budget is being cut to $15 million from $19 million as part of Gov. Corzine's attempts to reduce costs, said Stephanie Hoopes-Halpin, a political economist who serves on the public-TV commission.

She said the service hoped to avoid the cuts. "There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes and privately" to raise money from government and private sources.