PhillyDeals: Thriving in a place that forgives, or forgets

Pennsylvania is a forgiving place. Maybe too forgiving:

I: Legend: For a while in the 1990s, TL Ventures looked like it would be Philadelphia's breakout venture-capital giant.

Amid the dot.com boom, TL's first bets paid off, returning nearly 40 percent profits to early-bird clients like Pennsylvania's school pensions.

That helped TL, run by former Fidelity Bank lender Robert Keith, raise more than $1 billion for more ambitious investments. The Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System (SERS) gave TL $75 million in 1999-2000. Pension systems from Philadelphia, California, and beyond piled in, too.

Then the bubble burst. Over the next 14 years, TL repaid SERS just $39 million of its $75 million investment. Other clients were hit as hard. But Keith's firm kept collecting fees on those investments. SERS alone has paid TL more than $11 million to date.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Keith, 73, to pay $295,000 in returned fees and penalties after he was caught giving illegal campaign contributions to Gov. Tom Corbett and Mayor Nutter. Keith, a longtime political giver, had run afoul of a new ban on money managers' collecting city and state fees after giving their leaders cash.

Keith's peers are more appreciative: Fellow investment pros at PACT, the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology, say they will honor him with this year's Legend Award for Lifetime Achievement.

"It was a virtually unanimous decision to give this to Bob Keith," investment banker Charles Robins of Fairmount Partners, which is co-sponsoring the award, told me. He praised Keith's activity in groups like PACT, his investments outside TL, and his long record of encouraging the firm's founders and investors.

RoseAnn B. Rosenthal, who runs the Ben Franklin Technology Partnership, which channels state and bank funds to new companies, and PACT president Dean Miller told me Keith had done as much as anyone to mentor and guide members of Philadelphia's still-underweight new-tech community.

Keith declined several requests to comment for this column.

Keith helped his peers prosper. It would be cause for a more general celebration if all his public-sector clients could say the same.

II. Honored: Emma Chappell did a remarkable job in 1992 persuading savers and institutions to fund United Bank of Philadelphia as the city's only African American-run commercial bank.

But once the bank open under Chappell's leadership, expenses soared, loans languished, and United's board joined the Federal Reserve to push her out the door. The bank limps on, spending down its investors' sunk capital.

Chappell hasn't been a banker since 2000, unless you count her selection for Gov. Wolf's transition team - as a banking adviser. "She has diverse experience," Wolf spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan told me.

When I reached her, Chappell was humble: "What can I tell the Governor?" she asked. She supports the idea of a state-run "public bank." But mostly, "I'm just honored that he asked me to assist," she added.