Joint Venture

Yeadon hopes to enter into a joint venture with Darby Borough for trash pickup and recycling. Last month, Yeadon received a bid from Nu-Way Trash Removal Corp. of Primos, a local subidiary of Waste Management Inc., for the collection of refuse and recyclable items in both boroughs. "We will get a better price because two boroughs are in it together," borough manager Daniel Fox said during a Yeadon Council meeting Thursday. The recycling pickups would begin April 1. The two boroughs' combined cost for the nine-month contract would be $129,500.

Commercial real estate operator Brandywine Realty Trust, Radnor, said it formed a joint venture with Current Creek Investments L.L.C. to invest in properties in the Washington area. Brandywine is contributing three office properties valued at $156 million to the venture. Both partners also have allocated $75 million in equity "to pursue additional office property investments" in the Washington region, Brandywine said in a statement. Current Creek is a wholly owned subsidiary of Allstate Insurance Co.    - Reid Kanaley

United States Health Care Systems Inc., which Thursday reported record earnings, yesterday said that it would create a health maintenance organization in a joint venture with Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The company, based in Blue Bell, said that the two organizations had agreed in principle to form a new HMO that will serve northeastern Pennsylvania, an area now dominated by Blue Cross. The insurance plan has about 650,000 members, including about 100,000 Medicare beneficiaries, in the area.

The Binswanger real estate group is teaming up with a Mexican firm that helped pioneer the maquiladoras industrial parks to help U.S., European and Japanese businesses set up shop in Mexico and Central America. The joint venture between the Philadelphia commercial real estate firm and Grupo Bermudez, of Juarez, Mexico, will provide a full range of real estate services to foreign companies from the Rio Grande south into Colombia and Venezuela. "As the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

HIDDEN CREEK Glassboro, Gloucester County (609) 881-0777 There is something warm and affiliated about Hidden Creek in Glassboro. Most of the houses are twins, sharing one nicely insulated wall, and the whole 268-unit project is being produced by a joint venture. While New Jersey and Texas may not normally be considered to have a lot in common, one obvious exception is that developers in both states like to build houses that sell well. So Johnston Development of San Antonio, Texas, shook hands with Polamar of Allentown, N.J., and, with the permission of Glassboro planners, turned 105 acres on Mullica Hill Road into Hidden Creek.

A Brandywine Realty Trust joint venture agreed to buy three Silver Spring, Md., office buildings totaling 499,395 square feet of space for $120.6 million, the Radnor company said. Brandywine's partner in the joint venture is a subsidiary of Allstate Insurance Co. The seller is a joint venture between Urdang, a BNY Mellon Co. based in Plymouth Meeting, and Moore & Assoc. of Bethesda, Md. The deal is expected to close July 10. – Harold Brubaker

Teleflex Inc., of Plymouth Meeting, yesterday announced a joint venture with GE Aircraft Engines to repair commercial aircraft components. The companies expect the partnership to bring in sales of $50 million next year - or about a quarter of the global market for the repair of engine-fan blades and compressor airfoils. Sermatech International, a subsidiary of Teleflex, will own 51 percent of the joint venture. The new company, Airfoil Technologies International LLC, is expected to begin operations by the end of this year.

Astra/Merck, a joint venture of Merck & Co. and Sweden's leading pharmaceutical company, is planning a $53 million headquarters and research facility in Chester County. Gov. Casey yesterday recommended that the state legislature approve a $4.5 million low-interest state loan to help finance the new building. Astra/Merck plans to employ 135 when it opens the 150,000-square-foot facility in 1993. Up to 300 could be employed there by 1996. Merck said no decision had been made on the location.

The NBA has formed a joint venture with Anschutz Entertainment Group to design and develop about 12 multipurpose arenas in major Chinese cities. The project was announced yesterday at the O2 Arena in London, where the New Jersey Nets and Miami Heat played a preseason game. AEG runs the O2, and the venture will be equally owned by the two parties. NBA commissioner David Stern did not say when the plan would be starting, or where the buildings would be located. "We weren't going to start construction in the next couple of weeks," Stern said at a joint news conference with AEG president and CEO Timothy J. Leiweke.

The Pennsylvania Ballet and the Milwaukee Ballet are negotiating the possibility of combining operations as a joint venture, Andrew Rouse, president of the Philadelphia-based troupe, announced yesterday. The Pennsylvania Ballet initiated discussions in September, Rouse said, adding, "We have been looking at a wide range of options, from sharing costumes to merging companies under a single artistic director. " Mary Ladish, executive director of the Milwaukee Ballet, said during a telephone interview: "It's important to think of the possible relationship between the Pennsylvania Ballet and Milwaukee Ballet as a partnership.

A joint venture between two Philadelphia-area companies to supply water for hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale is returning a profit after a year in service, but growth has been dampened by a slowdown in drilling. Aqua-PVR Water Services L.L.C., formed by Aqua America Inc. and PVR Partners L.P., recently completed a third phase of building a pipeline that extends 56 miles from the Susquehanna River across Lycoming County into Tioga County to deliver water to shale-drilling operations.

In the Region Leaner Supervalu to shed workers   Supervalu Inc. , which last week sold Acme Markets and four other national supermarket chains to a Cerberus Capital Management-led investor group, said Tuesday that it plans to eliminate 1,100 jobs as it trims costs amid falling sales. The company still operates about two dozen Save-a-Lot stores in the Philadelphia region and at the Jersey Shore. The cuts, which will come from its corporate and store-support offices, include current positions and open jobs that won't be filled, Minnesota-based Supervalu said, and represent about 3.1 percent of its 35,000-employee workforce.

Comcast Corp., flush with billions of dollars from sales of assets and bonds, rapidly accelerated its acquisition of NBCUniversal on Tuesday, saying it would pay $16.7 billion for the 49 percent of the entertainment, news and film conglomerate that it doesn't already own. The Philadelphia cable giant expects the deal to close within the next six weeks. The seller is General Electric Co., which sold Comcast 51 percent of NBCUniversal in 2011. Comcast and GE were expected to operate NBCUniversal as a joint venture until at least mid-2014, and Comcast could have continued the joint venture through 2018.

MOSCOW - Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft strengthened its hold on the country's lucrative oil industry when it sealed a deal Monday to buy TNK-BP, the 50-50 joint venture between BP, the British energy country, and a group of Russian oil oligarchs. The deal will allow Rosneft, already the country's top oil producer, to increase its global profile. The new combined company will leapfrog ExxonMobil Corp. to become the world's largest publicly traded producer of oil and gas, in terms of output.

Comcast Corp. said Tuesday that it sold its 15.8 percent stake in A&E Television Networks L.L.C. for $3.025 billion in cash. The purchaser was A&E and enables Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Corp. to share 50-50 ownership in the TV programmer, whose hit shows include Pawn Stars, Storage Wars and American Pickers . Comcast acquired its stake in A&E through NBCUniversal, which it controls in a joint venture with General Electric. The $3 billion will remain with NBCUniversal, which can use it for business purposes.

Ownership of another Philadelphia-area refinery is about to change. NuStar Energy L.P. said it would sell 50 percent of its asphalt operations, which include refineries in Paulsboro, N.J., and Savannah, Ga., to a joint venture in a transaction expected to be completed by Sept. 30. Lindsay Goldberg L.L.C., a New York private-equity firm with $10 billion under management, will pay $175 million for a 50 percent interest in the joint venture, with San Antonio-based NuStar holding the other 50 percent stake.

Brian P. MacDonald, the son of a coal miner, grew up in a small town in Canada that was devastated by the deindustrialization of North America. "Our whole community got wiped out when we lost all of our coal mines, we lost our steel plant," said MacDonald, 46, who grew up in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. "Our whole area basically got wiped out, and I saw it happen in my teenage years. " So when MacDonald became chief executive officer of Sunoco Inc. on March 1 and public officials begged him to save the company's 1,400-acre Philadelphia refinery complex from imminent closure, their pleas had a special resonance.