Buyout

HARRISBURG - With a nearly half of the cash needed to buy out Philadelphia school superintendent Arlene Ackerman cloaked in secrecy, Pennsylvania auditor general Jack Wagner is launching an audit to get to the bottom of the $405,000 in private contributions to pay her. At a news conference Tuesday, Wagner called the Ackerman buyout "the granddaddy" of recent deals to remove school district executives in other parts of the state. "There is a proliferation of buyouts in school districts," Wagner said.

In recent weeks, high-ranking business leaders in the region have received calls asking them to donate to a charitable education organization that would then contribute funds to help buy out Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman's contract, sources said. According to the sources, the money would be funneled through the Philadelphia's Children First Fund, a charitable nonprofit set up in 2003 to support the School District. Ackerman is listed on the fund's website as a board member, as is Robert L. Archie Jr., the chairman of the School Reform Commission.

Where is Arlene Ackerman? The embattled school superintendent, widely rumored to be at the end of her tenure in Philadelphia, did not attend the School Reform Commission meeting last week. She was not at a Monday news conference on possible state exam cheating in the Philadelphia School District. And she was noticeably absent from Tuesday's Superintendent's 2011 Leadership Conference, an annual meeting that serves as a start to the school year. The event's agenda listed Ackerman as a speaker from 8:45 to 9:10 a.m., but officials told the hundreds of principals and others gathered at Abraham Lincoln High School that she was absent because of circumstances beyond her control.

Some veteran Merck employees, including those in West Point and Upper Gwynedd, had a decision to make Friday that will affect employment for themselves and colleagues with the global pharmaceutical manufacturer. A union official said Friday was the deadline for filing papers to accept early-retirement packages offered by the company, which recently said it was going to cut 13,000 jobs across the company by 2015. "If they get their number, then maybe not, but if they don't get their number, there might be layoffs," said Dan Bangert, plant chairman of United Steelworkers Union Local 10-00086.

Biopharmaceutical maker Cephalon Inc., of Frazer, said Thursday that stockholders approved the company's proposed $6.8 billion acquisition by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Teva, based in Israel but with large operations in the region, in May offered $81.50 a share for Cephalon. At the time, Cephalon was trying to ward off a $73-a-share hostile-takeover attempt by Canadian firm Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. The deal remains under review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission.

Joshua Harris , leader of the Wall Street group that has reached a deal with Comcast-Spectacor to buy the 76ers , is a billionaire bottom-feeder who buys damaged assets cheaply and sells them at a profit. That's how Harris, 46, who grew up in suburban Washington and graduated from Penn and Harvard, has made his bread since the end of the 1980s, when he escaped the former junk-bond giant Drexel Burnham Lambert . That was after Harris' fellow Wharton graduate Michael Milken wrecked the firm with illegal deals and went to prison.

With so much perceived parity, Thursday's NBA draft is difficult to handicap, not only for the so-called mock-draft experts but also for teams. Rod Thorn, the 76ers president, says his team was prepared for a number of scenarios with the 16th pick in the first round and 50th in the second round. "After the first three to four picks, guys you think may go between five and eight may be available at 16. That's how close the skill level is on a lot of players," Thorn said. Now, there is another potential hitch in the draft that teams will have to contend with: the uncertain availability of Jonas Valanciunas.

Improved helmet design has helped reduce concussions in impact sports such as football and hockey, but it might be impossible to design a helmet that completely eliminates them, according to a panel of sports science professors outlining the latest findings. Helmets "certainly help to mitigate forces that are distributed by impact to the skull and the intracranial cavity and the brain," said Kevin Guskiewicz , a professor of sports science at North Carolina and an expert on football helmets.

C&D Technologies Inc., Blue Bell, said today that it received a proposal from a New York private equity firm to take the company private. The firm, Angelo, Gordon & Co. L.P., already owns 65 percent of the company's stock, and it offered $9.50 in cash for the remainder. That values the company at $144.4 million, based on the number of shares it had outstanding as of April 30. In afternoon over-the-counter trading today, C&D shares were up $1.10 to $9.35. Their high over the last 52 weeks was $29.31 nearly a year ago, and they have trended down since then.