Business news in brief

A stockbroker at Valley Forge Investment Group has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud related to a scheme that defrauded investors of millions of dollars and led to 17 criminal convictions. Robert Montani Jr., 45, pleaded guilty just before he was to go on trial in federal court in Newark, N.J., for manipulating the price of two thinly traded stocks from 1999 to 2001. Montani was a broker at Bryn Mawr Investment Group in Rosemont, later known as Valley Forge Securities. Prosecutors said Montani helped the firm's chief executive officer, Tonino Labella, and other brokers defraud shareholders of Eagletech Communications Inc. and Select Media Communications Inc. Montani, who lives in Valley Forge, faces between 33 and 41 months in prison under advisory sentencing guidelines. Montani was the final defendant to plead guilty. Labella pleaded guilty Oct. 26.

- Bloomberg News

Kenexa Corp., the Wayne-based staffing software company, said it intended to offer an additional 3.75 million shares of common stock. Traded on Nasdaq, the new shares represent an 18 percent increase in the company's outstanding shares. Credit Suisse Securities, Cowen & Co., William Blair & Co., CIBC World Markets Corp., JMP Securities, Needham & Co. and Boenning & Scattergood will act as managers, with Credit Suisse Securities as the sole bookrunning manager.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

QuantRx Biomedical Corp., a medical-technology company in Doylestown, said it would open a 7,000-square-foot research and manufacturing plant in Portland, Ore., in mid-February. The company has seven employees in Doylestown and 16 others in Arizona, Massachusetts and Oregon, chairman and chief executive officer Walter Witoshkin said. QuantRx, founded in 1987 under the name Xtramedics, said it expected to "double" the number of employees in Doylestown and in Oregon in the next 12 months, when it launches six diagnostic products.

- Linda Loyd

Environmental Tectonics Corp. said it was reorganizing in an effort at boosting performance. The reorganization creates two operating units - the Training Services Group and the Control Systems Group - to oversee Environmental Tectonics' many business units. The reorganization will become effective

Feb. 24, when the company begins its new fiscal year. In addition, the company said, it planned to engage a valuation firm to appraise its intellectual assets, including software. The announcement came a day after the Southampton company, which designs and operates flight simulation and other training systems, posted a third-quarter loss of $1.9 million, or 22 cents per share. - Reid Kanaley

Drug companies are doing a much better job of supplying key information about research they are doing since medical journals started pressuring them to enter studies in a government registry, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. The federal registry, at

» READ MORE: www.clinicaltrials.gov

, began operating in 2000, but saw little industry participation until late 2004. That was when the 11 members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors said they would publish only studies registered early on, in part to keep drug companies from suppressing the results of experiments that did not turn out the way they wanted. Jeffrey Drazen, editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Deborah A. Zarin, of the National Library of Medicine, which operates the registry, report on its progress in an editorial in today's issue of the journal. Only 8 percent of the 2,983 studies that drugmakers added to the registry last year failed to describe the outcomes being measured in the experiment, such as cholesterol levels or deaths. That was down from 26 percent of studies registered in the prior years.

- AP

Malden Mills Industries Inc., a century-old textile-maker that emerged from bankruptcy in 2003, said it has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization again to clear the way for the company's sale to Gordon Bros. Group, for $44 million. Malden Mills, based in Lawrence, Mass., and founded in 1906, makes Polartec fleece and specialty fabrics for customers including Lands' End, the North Face and the Pentagon. Former chief executive officer Aaron Feuerstein, whose family ran the company for three generations, gained national renown for his decision to keep workers on the payroll after a December 1995 fire destroyed the company's main factory. His bid to buy back Malden Mills was rejected by the company's board in late 2004. The company has struggled to overcome financial problems left over from its previous bankruptcy, while also competing against foreign textilemakers that enjoy lower labor costs.

- AP

The former general counsel of Comverse Technology Inc., who has pleaded guilty to a scheme to pocket millions by backdating stock options, has agreed to pay about $3 million in fines and restitution to settle civil fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission. William F. Sorin also will be permanently barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company and from working as a lawyer for one, under terms of the settlement. He neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing under the accord, which calls for him to pay a $600,000 civil fine and $1,670,915 in restitution, plus $817,509 in interest.

- AP

Eastman Kodak Co. said it would sell its health-imaging business to a subsidiary of Onex Corp., Canada's biggest buyout firm, for up to $2.55 billion. Created a year after the discovery of X-rays in 1895, the unit accounts for nearly one-fifth of Kodak's overall sales, but its operating profit plunged 21 percent in 2005 as margins tightened.

- AP

Pharmacy-benefits manager Express Scripts Inc. has asked a Delaware court to void a $675 million breakup fee protecting the planned merger of rival Caremark Rx Inc. and drugstore chain CVS Corp. The Delaware Court of Chancery lawsuit is another step-up in hostilities over who should merge with Caremark: Express Scripts or CVS. Express Scripts says the $675 million breakup fee is unreasonable, improper and coercive, and unlawfully locks Caremark into the stock-for-stock deal with CVS. Caremark has rebuffed a takeover bid from Express Scripts, even though Express Scripts says its $58.50 cash-and-stock offer is superior to the proposed deal with CVS.

- AP

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab will meet tomorrow with the head of the World Trade Organization in a further effort to revive stalled global trade talks. Schwab will fly to Geneva for discussions with WTO Director General Pascal Lamy on ways to revive the Doha Round of trade talks, which have been suspended since July.

- AP

The average seven-day yield on taxable money-market funds rose this week to 4.73 percent from 4.72 percent, according to iMoneyNet Inc. A seven-day yield is an annual yield that is based on the preceding seven days' level of income by the fund. The average yield on tax-free funds fell to 2.99 percent from 3.28 percent last week.

- Thomas J. Brady