Dupont

The Conestoga Country Club team of Drew Hood and John Cooper won the two- man scramble tournament of the Philadelphia PGA on the Nemours Course of the DuPont Country Club yesterday with a 9-under-par score of 60. The event, which opened the association's 1992 schedule, was played on the Nemours Course and on the DuPont Course. The winning team on the DuPont Course was Rick Osberg of Waynesborough Country Club and Jim Bromley of Whitemarsh Valley Country Club, who shot a 7- under-par 63.

DuPont Co. said yesterday that it was restructuring its chemical and specialties operations, a move it said would eliminate an unknown number of jobs. Chairman and chief executive Edgar S. Woolard Jr. said the moves at the Wilmington company would reorganize six business sectors "to have only one layer between strategic business units" and his office. In a news release, he said that for most employees, there would be little effect but that "excess positions" would result. There is no way to determine how many jobs would be affected until each business has assessed its needs, he said.

They ought to rename the A.I. duPont Institute in Wilmington. You may have read about the place. It's the 97-bed pediatric hospital that's going to turn away youngsters who test positive for AIDS. They ought to rename it: the A.I. duPont Institute for Kids Who Aren't Too Sick. That's the message the hospital's overseers at the Nemours Foundation in Jacksonville, Fla., inscribed over its portals with a no-kids-with-AIDS policy that began July 1. It's a first for a hospital in this country.

John Osterlund, 86, a retired DuPont Co. executive and father of U.S. District Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, died Monday at Forsyth Memorial Hospital, in Winston-Salem, N.C. Mr. Osterlund was born in Philadelphia and was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the university's Wharton School. He joined DuPont in 1936 and eventually became assistant to the secretary of the company. He retired in 1974. His daughter Marjorie (known as Midge) is the wife of Mayor Rendell.

The basketball game between Villanova and Connecticut, a sweaty, sticky defensive battle touched by wild momentum swings, finally came down to a one- on-one battle between two fine athletes. With the Huskies up, 73-71, Lance Miller, Villanova's slashing forward, spotted an open path to the baseline. His eyes widened; he dribbled and took his long, smooth step. Lyman DePriest, Connecticut's defensive specialist, moved, too. Miller reached the hoop and rose, confident of a game-tying layup.

Just because the prestigious McDonald's Championship has moved from White Manor Country Club, in Malvern, to DuPont Country Club, LPGA commissioner John Laupheimer, a native of Philadelphia, does not believe the Southeastern Pennsylvania area has to feel a sense of loss. "We're still here," said Laupheimer, who was at DuPont yesterday to help formally introduce the event's new home for the next three years. "We'd like to think of this as a tournament for metropolitan Philadelphia, as well as the Wilmington area.

WILMINGTON - DuPont Co. has received the final regulatory approval needed for its planned $5.8 billion acquisition of Danish food additives maker Danisco AS. DuPont said Friday that Chinese regulators have approved the deal, and that it is encouraging Danisco shareholders who have not yet tendered their shares to do so. DuPont has said it is confident that Danisco shareholders will follow their board's recommendation to accept DuPont's cash offer,...

DuPont Co. said today it bought Innovalight Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif., company founded in 2005 that makes silicon inks and other materials designed to improve the efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cells. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With revenue of more than $1 billion from photovoltaic market last year, DuPont, of Wilmington, said its goal was to reach $2 billion in such sales by 2014. Privately held Innovalight said in May it would receive $3.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to accelerate the development and production of the company's products.

Higher-than-expected raw-material costs surprised DuPont Co. early this year, but it pushed through price increases on finished products, allowing it to boost first-quarter profit, the company said yesterday. Reflecting what it sees as solid growth for the year, DuPont announced its first dividend increase in seven years. The quarterly dividend, payable June 11 to stockholders of record May 13, was raised 2 cents to 37 cents a share. "I've seen no recessionary pressures in the past four weeks or the past four months," DuPont's chief financial officer, Gary M. Pfeiffer, said in a conference call with analysts.

DuPont Co. said yesterday that it had reached an agreement with authorities in the Chinese city of Dongying to build a titanium dioxide plant that will employ 350 workers by 2010. The plant will produce 200,000 tons a year of the white pigment, which is added to coatings, paint and paper. This will be DuPont's sixth titanium dioxide plant; the others are in Delaware, Tennessee, Mississippi, Mexico and Taiwan. The plant in DeLisle, Miss., was damaged by Hurricane Katrina and is not expected to resume operations until January.

IN THE REGION Merck fines total $950M for Vioxx Merck & Co. was fined $321.6 million by U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris in Boston following the company's December guilty plea to one misdemeanor count related to its promotion and marketing of the painkiller Vioxx, the Justice Department said. In November, Merck settled civil charges, for which it agreed to pay $628.4 million over additional allegations regarding off-label marketing of Vioxx and false statements about the drug's cardiovascular safety.

Want some more kindling to toss on the employment fire? I reviewed the latest annual reports for 25 of the biggest Philadelphia-area public companies and found that they actually increased their workforces between 2010 and 2011 by 8 percent. Though that's about 8 percent more than I would have guessed originally, it turns out that those same 25 companies had grown their workforces by 6 percent between 2009 and 2010. As for how this could be, I offer one word: acquisitions.

FDS Winter Tour WHITFORD C.C. Two-man scramble. Neil Gillies, Mountain Branch; Gary Hardin, Northampton. . . 64 John Rusk, Jack Hogan, Yardley. . . 65 Joe Kogelman, Indian Valley; Steve Ashworth, Paxon Hollow. . . 66 Gary Deetscreek, Five Ponds; Mickey Sokalski, Philmont. . . 67 Bill Sautter, Phila. Cricket; Dave Fardon, Saucon Valley. . . 67 Drew O'Neill, Whitemarsh; Art Brosius, DuPont. . . 67 John Emmel, Back Bay; Rick Flesher, Lederach.

Raymond E. Batten, 83, a retired DuPont Co. supervisor, home builder, and health store owner, formerly of Gloucester County, died of complications from emphysema on Tuesday, Dec. 13, at Indian River Medical Center in Vero Beach, Fla. After graduating from Pitman High School in 1946, Mr. Batten became an apprentice mechanic at the DuPont plant in Carneys Point, Salem County. He remained with DuPont for 36 years, retiring as senior supervisor for storage and transport. In his spare time, Mr. Batten did home improvements for neighbors.

DuPont Co. agreed Thursday to pay $725,000 in fines after New Jersey investigators found that its Salem County chemical manufacturing facility did not follow state rules on handling hazardous waste. This is the second time in five years state environmental officials have cited the company over its Chambers Works facility, a 1,455-acre site on the Delaware River in Pennsville, Deepwater, and Carneys Point. In 2006, DuPont agreed to pay $105,000 after the Department of Environmental Protection found more than 220 cases of chemicals and waste had been spilled or improperly discharged at the plant.

Charles E. Wilson, 89, a former DuPont Co. chemist and salesman, died of complications from esophageal cancer Wednesday, Oct. 26, after a brief stay at Bellingham & Parklane in West Goshen. He lived nearby at the Hershey's Mill retirement community. In 2010, Chester County Citizens for Climate Protection named an annual award for Mr. Wilson and presented the first one to him, his son Richard said. He was a board member of the Brandywine Valley Association, an environmental group.

DuPont Co. agreed Thursday to pay $500,000 to settle state and federal accusations the company polluted the Delaware River with toxic industrial chemicals "numerous" times in the last six years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Delaware's environmental agency, and state and federal prosecutors joined in a consent decree to curb illegal chemical discharges at DuPont's Edge Moor works next to Fox Point State Park just north of Wilmington, which processes titanium dioxide, used in auto paints, printing, and other industries.

NO OTHER American city celebrates Belgian beer like Philadelphia. I didn't say that, but one of the nation's biggest importers of Belgian beer did as Philly Beer Week hammered out details on a first-ever collaboration with one of Belgium's iconic beer makers, Brasserie Dupont. The makers of Saison Dupont , regarded by some experts as one of the top 10 beers in the world, will brew the official international beer of Philly Beer Week 2012. It's the first time the 167-year-old brewery has made a beer with someone outside its own family.

If you're a student or admirer of the duPonts, there's a new book to lighten the long winter's darkness. It's called Nemours: A Portrait of Alfred I. duPont's House, by Dwight Young and Grace Gary, with photos by Sisse Brimberg and Cotton Coulson (Rizzoli International Publications, $40). It took three sherpas 30 minutes to haul these 307 pages upstairs to my third-floor desk at The Inquirer. Just kidding. But this is one hefty love letter to "a true American original and the Delaware estate he called Nemours.