Vanguard ready to break ground on buildings

Eight years after winning conditional approval for a suburban office project twice the size of Comcast's Philadelphia headquarters, Vanguard Group says it is ready to break ground at the Happy Days dairy, by the Downington turnpike exit in Uwchlan Township.

The nation's largest mutual fund firm - and Chester County's biggest employer - plans to start work this year on the first two buildings, which will total 440,000 square feet and house 2,000 workers, spokeswoman Amy Chain said Friday.

The company will make an updated proposal at a township meeting Monday night, said Uwchlan manager Doug Hanley. The three-member board has to give final approval, and that vote won't happen until it has had time to see and weigh Vanguard's final plan.

Pennsylvania gave Vanguard a $12 million "Opportunity Grant" in April 2002 after the company promised to create 6,000 jobs over 10 years, plus millions more in construction-material sales-tax breaks, road improvements, and other subsidies.

But Vanguard's growth slowed as stock prices fell in 2000-01. The company delayed work on the complex, and gave back $3 million of the grant in July 2007 for not meeting the original target.

The new buildings, which will open in 2010 or later, are to house "our existing crew and to accommodate eventual growth over time," Chain said.

Vanguard says it employs about 9,000 at its Malvern headquarters and other nearby offices, up from 8,500 in 2000.

Medical money:

Quaker BioVentures, Philadelphia, said Friday it had raised $420 million to close its second venture-capital fund.

That follows an earlier $220 million fund, set up in 2003, which returned 23 cents of every dollar invested during its first four years, according to a report by the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System, a Quaker investor.

Quaker focuses on companies between metro Boston and metro Atlanta, an area that "continues to lag in the pace of life sciences venture investment, even though it is home to many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, leading research institutions and government agencies," cofounder Sherrill Neff said in a statement.

The new fund has so far put money into antipsychotic drugmaker Argolyn BioScience, Charleston, S.C.; insulin developer Diasome Pharmaceuticals, Conshohocken; specialty-drug marketer EKR Therapeutics, Cedar Knoll, N.J.; eye-treatment maker Optherion Inc., New Haven, Conn.; and lung-treatment maker Transave, Monmouth Junction, N.J.

Fight shapes up:

HIG Capital, the $3.5 billion Miami investment firm, is trying to bust up a bankruptcy court proposal that would put Versa Capital Management of Philadelphia in control of Shapes/Arch Holdings LLC, one of South Jersey's biggest employers.

According to papers filed in the New Jersey federal bankruptcy court earlier this month, HIG wants a chance to make a competing offer that would include "far more favorable terms" for unsecured creditors than the "approximately 2 percent" HIG says Versa would pay.

Versa agreed last month to put up to $25 million into Shapes/Arch, in exchange for control, pending court approval of a bankruptcy reorganization plan.

Shapes/Arch, which filed for Chapter 11 protection last month, employs 1,000 at plants in Pennsauken's Delair section and Bensalem, Bucks County. Profits fell last year as orders for home and truck parts fell.

Versa, formerly called Chrysalis Capital Partners, is (like Quaker BioVentures) an affiliate of Independence Capital Partners, a Philadelphia investment group founded by Ira Lubert and his partners. Investors include Pennsylvania's state workers' and teachers' pension systems.

HIG used to own Claymont Steel in Delaware, among other industrial properties. HIG and Shapes didn't return calls seeking comment last week.

Salt sale off table:

Rohm & Haas tried unsuccessfully to sell its Morton Salt unit last year. Now that business is helping the Philadelphia chemical-maker weather the slowdown in U.S. business, credit analysts say.

Salt is "recession proof," and a spike in winter road-salt sales helped "cushion" Rohm & Haas' falling U.S. chemical sales and higher petroleum and propylene costs, wrote Andrew Brady and Wen Li at CreditSights.

Rohm & Haas borrowed $1.5 billion to buy back stock last year, but "that ungrateful stock market is still not satisfied," and shares fell after earnings were released last week, noted Carol Levenson, research director at Gimme Credit. "The combination of weaker fundamentals and more aggressive shareholder enhancement is a recipe for deteriorating credit profile."

So salt is off the table, for now: Rohm & Haas "is waiting for the credit markets to stabilize before continuing to explore its options," concluded Brady and Li.