Advanta

Two local financial institutions, Montgomery County bank Harleysville National Corp. and small-business credit-card issuer Advanta, disclosed unrelated regulatory problems yesterday. Harleysville said federal bank regulators had ordered it to boost capital reserves, used to cover loan losses, above the generally accepted levels at its Harleysville National Bank & Trust Co. unit by the end of the month. To meet the new requirements, the bank said it was trying to raise capital, sell assets, or both.

What if venture capitalists tried to create jobs as well as profits? That's the premise of DVCRF Ventures, the two-year-old investment arm of the $80 million-asset, nonprofit Delaware Valley Community Reinvestment Fund, which is better known for financing development in depressed neighborhoods. The fund's $10 million has so far financed eight firms, which have gone on to hire more than 800 people in the Philadelphia area, according to the fund's founder, Joseph Killackey, a Wharton School graduate and former loan officer at Philadelphia National Bank.

Having agreed to buy Advanta Corp.'s vast but troubled credit-card business, Fleet Financial Group yesterday put one of the industry's most powerful executives in charge. Joseph W. Saunders, Household International credit-card chief, was named chairman and chief executive of Fleet's credit-card unit. The move was disclosed by Household and confirmed by Fleet yesterday, surprising senior Advanta officials who hadn't been told of the move. Saunders, 52, who is also chairman of MasterCard International's Global Board of Directors, will fill the vacuum left by the abrupt departure of Advanta chief executive Alex W. Hart and credit-card chief James Allhusen.

ON FRIDAY, Dec. 18, Ami Kassar and a handful of other employees at the bankrupt Advanta Corp. were laid off. The next day, Kassar and his partner, Paul Tiefling, another Advanta casualty, started to brainstorm their own company. The plan was to set themselves up as middlemen between small companies looking for bank loans to grow and bank loan departments looking to lend. Kassar had been at Advanta for nine years and was its chief innovation officer, responsible for its Internet strategy and social-networking site, Ideablob, among other things.

In the Region Advanta makes payment to investors A first payment of $52.6 million was made to Advanta Corp. investment-note holders, a posting Friday on the bankrupt credit-card company's website said. That is 37.6 percent of the $139.9 million owed to more than 2,600 investors who bought the retail notes that paid relatively high interest rates. Also, Advanta's liquidating trustee reserved $11.1 million toward a $50 million claim by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Todd Martin remembers when the Philadelphia indoor tennis tournament was a prime-time winter event. Now, Martin looks around on opening night of the Advanta tournament and sees no more than a few hundred people scattered around the lower level of the CoreStates Center. "It's disappointing that you don't have a crowd out there to appreciate what you're doing," Martin said last night after defeating ninth-seeded Byron Black 6-4, 7-6 (7-3). "But, the players understand the troubles the tournament's been through over the past eight to 10 years, and how great a tournament it was before then.

Brian Tierney, the area advertising executive who most recently was vice chairman of Advanta Corp., wants to get back into business - business magazines. Tierney said in an interview yesterday that he and two other investors would bid for Inc. and Fast Company magazines by Monday. Tierney, founder of Tierney Communications and T2 Group, did not disclose financial details. He said, however, that if he and the other investors - J. Brian O'Neill, chairman of O'Neill Properties Group, of King of Prussia, and Strattech Partners, a venture-capital firm in Radnor - could acquire the two national business magazines, they would create a company to leverage the Inc. and Fast Company brands to provide educational services to small businesses.

A lawyer for a group of Pennsylvania bar owners has filed a class-action complaint against the leasing companies that financed automatic-teller machines through distributor Credit Card Center of Philadelphia before it filed for bankruptcy protection June 6. According to the suit, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, the company promised to pay the bar owners rebates of more than $250 a month - enough to cover the machines' lease payments....

Efforts to raise more than $1.5 million for improvements to Penllyn Woods Park are gaining ground. With a plan in hand, the Penllyn Woods Park Fund-Raising Committee, composed of 12 local residents and business owners, has brought in about $800,000. "So, we're just halfway there," said Chip Behr, chairman of the township park and recreation board, who also heads the committee. "We still have at least $700,000 to reach our goal. " The nonprofit organization, which first met last July, created a five-tier fund-raising plan that focused first on the township's top 14 businesses.

Advanta's sponsorship of the men's tennis tournament at the CoreStates Center apparently is not a one-and-done deal. "We're here to stay," Dennis Alter, chief executive officer of the Montgomery County-based financial services company, said yesterday after presenting Pete Sampras with his $110,000 winner's check. Later, Barbara Perry, a senior vice president of International Management Group, which owns the tournament, wasn't as definitive. Perry, the Advanta tournament director, said she was "pretty certain" the tournament will continue in Philadelphia.