PhillyDeals: Santorum quits board of Universal Health Services

Ex-U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) has quit his post as a member of the board of directors of Universal Health Services Inc., the King of Prussia, for-profit hospital chain that relies on taxpayer-funded programs for more than one-third of its revenue, "as a result of his recent and formal announcement" that he's running for president of the United States, Universal said Wednesday.

Santorum is stepping away from a post that paid him $168,000 in cash and stock last year for attending board and compensation committee meetings.

His duties included approving a $10 million cash, stock, and insurance compensation package for Universal chief executive Alan B. Miller, according to a shareholders' proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Universal, like other for-profit hospital operators and insurers, has a big stake in the future of government-subsidized health care.

The company relied on taxpayer-funded Medicare and Medicaid payments for 38 percent of its $5.6 billion in sales last year, according to Universal's annual report, enabling the company to generously compensate executives like Miller and directors like Santorum.

The company collected profits totaling $230 million in 2010.

Banks in play

First Niagara Bank is looking to buy another $1 billion-plus Philadelphia-area bank, Jason O'Donnell, bank-stock analyst at Boenning & Scattergood in West Conshohocken, reports after a visit to the Buffalo company.

Surviving banks of similar size that could be buyout targets are Beneficial, Bryn Mawr Trust, Firstrust, and Univest National Bank & Trust, among others.

The company has hired a dozen new business lenders to finance business expansions in the region, O'Donnell notes in a report to clients.

Separately, ING Direct Bank, Arkadi Kuhlmann's $80 billion-asset online- and phone-based deposit-and-loan bank that employs 1,000 at its Wilmington headquarters, could be sold by its Dutch-Belgian owners as early as this week to satisfy European Union orders that were part of the company's bailout during the 2008 financial crisis.

Gossip in the investment-banker world has GE Finance, credit-card giant Capital One, and commercial lender CIT as possible buyers or partial investors in ING Direct.

Patents to spices