Executives

Three former executives of medical-device manufacturer Synthes Inc. were sentenced to prison Monday. A fourth might have been if his attorney hadn't collapsed while standing at a lectern moments after saying that Synthes' unindicted board chairman was the ultimate authority and responsible for the illegal, sometimes fatal, bone-cement trial at the center of the proceedings. Michael Huggins, 54, of West Chester, the former president of Synthes USA, was sentenced to nine months in prison and taken into custody immediately.

For a Penn Stater who took a knee on the Old Main steps more than a decade ago to propose marriage, and who has convinced his three children — Penn State "purebreds" — that the school is the greatest on Earth, the release of the Freeh report on the Sandusky sex-abuse scandal was fraught with anticipation. As university president Rodney Erickson and the Board of Trustees digest the report, they would do well to consider one of the great responses to crisis in modern history: Johnson & Johnson's 1982 recall of Tylenol.

T HE DELAWARE River Port Authority has wasted millions of dollars of toll payers' money through mismanagement and political cronyism, the New Jersey state comptroller said in a damning report Thursday. Comptroller Matthew Boxer chastised the DRPA for practices such as its much-criticized "economic development" spending and its now-halted free E-ZPass benefits for DRPA executives and their families and friends. Boxer also exposed an insurance payback deal allegedly orchestrated by George E. Norcross III, the South Jersey insurance executive and Democratic Party power broker who is chairman of the board of Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

Teletronics Technology Corp., a Newtown Township manufacturer, received a U.S. Air Force contract worth up to $60 million over five years. The contract is essentially a negotiated shopping list that allows the Air Force's flight-test community to order from among roughly 2,000 Teletronics products, Albert Berdugo, the privately held company's executive vice president and chief technology officer, said Friday. The contract "is exciting to us, not only because it is big, but it gave us the opportunity to include all the latest developments that we've done in the last three years," Berdugo said.

Two surveys of pharmaceutical executives released Tuesday suggest a troubling, or at least tumultuous, future for an industry that employs thousands of people in the Philadelphia area. The consulting firm KPMG spoke with 100 senior executives from companies in three annual-revenue categories, though none with less than $100 million. Eighty-three percent of those leaders said it was likely that their company would buy a company or be sold to another company during the next two years.

Top managers at the Delaware River Port Authority ran up corporate credit-card expenses of $38,167 in 13 months, DRPA records show. The expenses included $500-a-night lodging at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City for two executives to attend the Pennsylvania Society gala, an annual meeting of Pennsylvania politicians and power-brokers. In March, two executives charged $4,666 to attend a cruise-ship convention in Miami. On other trips, three executives went to Miami and Seattle last October in pursuit of cruise-ship business, putting $2,325 on their cards, primarily for lodging and dining.

Paul T. Murray has been appointed to the board of A Woman's Place , a Chalfont organization committed to the empowerment of women and to ending intimate and domestic violence for all. He is president of PTM Wealth Management. Eric Pritchard, a partner in the business and finance department at Kleinbard Bell & Brecker L.L.P., has been appointed to the board of the Montgomery County Industrial Development Authority, which helps companies finance projects with money secured from private-sector financial institutions.

"I can't wait for it to open in a little more than three months. " - Ed Snider, chairman, Comcast-Spectacor, on the unveiling of the Xfinity Live! development at the South Philadelphia stadium complex. "People might not even recognize it's Comcast. " - Ronald Hill, marketing professor, Villanova University, on naming the development Xfinity Live! "[PGW] failed to take required steps to minimize the danger of accidental ignition of gas. " - Public Utility Commission report on a blast in Tacony in January 2011 that killed a PGW worker.

5 executives with Komen have quit DALLAS - At least five high-ranking executives with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity have resigned in the aftermath of the organization's since-reversed decision to eliminate its funding for Planned Parenthood. The departures include three officials from Komen's Dallas headquarters, as well as CEOs of affiliate groups in Oregon and New York City. Although some of the executives cited personal reasons, the resignations suggest that Komen is still in turmoil, even after restoring the money.