Business news in brief

An Oregon hedge fund, Beacon Rock Capital L.L.C., agreed to forfeit $475,905 in profit from a scheme to defraud mutual funds through deceptive market timing from 1999 to 2003, said Rich Manieri, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. He said the firm still faced a potential fine of up to $25 million, though federal sentencing guidelines called for a fine of $1.2 million to $2.5 million. A plea hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday, at which Beacon and codefendant Thomas Gerbasio of Ocean City, N.J., are expected to plead guilty to charges detailed last week. Gerbasio, former vice president of mutual funds at Fiserv Securities Inc., Philadelphia, faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $5 million.

- Harold Brubaker

K-Tron International Inc., of Pitman, said it completed the acquisition of assets of a Chinese maker of feeders and controls for up to $3.5 million. The seller is Wuxi Chenghao Machinery Co. Ltd., a private company, and the purchased assets will be renamed Wuxi K-Tron Colormax Machinery Co. Ltd. It will be located in Wuxi City, 60 miles west of Shanghai. Wuxi's products, which include pelletizers and pneumatic screen changers, are used in plastics compounding and injection-molding processes. It will have 65 employees. The $3.5 million estimated cost of the deal will include payments over five years by K-Tron under employment and other arrangements with Wuxi Chenghao's owner.

- Paul Schweizer

Internationally, the concept of microloans - small loans to small businesses - got a big boost last year when Muhammad Yumus won the Nobel Peace Prize for Grameen Bank's work in Bangladesh. Yesterday, a handful of Philadelphia-area microentrepreneurs were to receive Citigroup's version of the same idea - small grants to improve their women-owned small businesses. Citigroup chose Philadelphia as one of 15 areas in the nation for its 2007 Women and Company Microenterprise Boost Program.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Merck & Co. Inc.'s pain reliever Vioxx was not a cause of an Illinois woman's fatal 2003 heart attack, an Illinois jury ruled in the 10th product-liability case over the drug that the company has won. The jury of seven women and five men in state court in Edwardsville, Ill., said Vioxx was not a cause of Patricia Schwaller's heart attack. Attorneys for Merck, the third-biggest U.S. drugmaker, argued that the woman's obesity and other health issues were the more-likely cause.

- Bloomberg News

Optium Corp., Horsham, said it agreed to buy Kailight Photonics Inc. for $35 million in cash. Kailight, a private Israeli company with 20 employees, makes optical transmission products for the telecommunications industry. Optium provides optical subsystems for the telecommunications and cable television industries. As part of the deal, it will assume all Kailight debt and employee payments due for the change in control of the company.

- Paul Schweizer

Rohm & Haas Co. said it had obtained a license from Harvard University researchers to market a new class of compounds for use in semiconductor chips. The Philadelphia chemical company and the university said the technology would allow for the making of thin metal and metal-compound films by a process called atomic layer deposition. The dollar value of the license agreement was not disclosed. Under its terms, Rohm & Haas has exclusive rights to manufacture and market the "amidinate compounds" to semiconductor manufacturers. Atomic layer deposition, or ALD, is a technique for building layers with the thickness of only one atom. The technology is being developed in the lab of Harvard chemistry professor Roy Gordon.

- Reid Kanaley

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded DuPont Co., Wilmington, up to $3.7 million to continue research begun in 2002 to develop an efficient system to convert the cellulose in corn stover to ethanol. DuPont was among five organizations splitting up to $23 million.

- Harold Brubaker

Comcast Corp. may acquire Sprint Nextel Corp. to compete with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. in the mobile-phone arena, Doug Ashton, an analyst at FTN Midwest Securities Corp., told investors in a research note. The two companies have had a joint venture to sell wireless for two years. Such situations often lead to mergers, Ashton said. Speculation about such a deal has been around for months, and Comcast has repeatedly dismissed the idea. The company referred questions yesterday to a March statement by Comcast chief executive officer Brian L. Roberts: "I want to restate that we do not envision having to make a large wireless acquisition."

- Miriam Hill

Philadelphia's Sivoo Holdings Inc. was expected to announce today that it had signed an agreement with GlobeCast WorldTV to carry content from more than 60 of that company's channels, beginning in June. Sivoo is an Internet TV Network that offers on-demand programming from foreign countries. It currently offers movies and other programming in Spanish, Chinese and Hindi through its Web site, Sivoo.com. The GlobeCast agreement will add content in several other languages, including Russian, Tagalog, Korean and Italian. GlobeCast WorldTV, a unit of France Telecom, distributes international television and radio programming.

- Miriam Hill

The chairman and chief executive officer of Technitrol Inc., a maker of electronic parts, issued a statement expressing disappointment with Bel Fuse Inc.'s rejection of its $480 million offer to buy the company. Technitrol, Trevose, said last week that it offered to acquire Bel Fuse, a Jersey City maker of magnetics-based electronics components, for $40.30 a share. On Monday night, Bel's board of directors said the offer significantly undervalued Bel's stock. The board added that a stock-buyback program was in the best interest of Bel's shareholders. "We are very disappointed in the vague tone of the Bel Fuse board of directors' statement regarding our firm and fair offer," James M. Papada III, the Technitrol CEO, said.

- Suzette Parmley

AT&T Inc.'s Cingular Wireless plans to introduce mobile-banking capabilities with four prominent banks, the biggest such initiative in the United States, but still shy of the industry's long-discussed goal of turning cell phones into credit cards. The deals with Wachovia Corp., Regions Financial Corp., SunTrust Banks Inc. and BancorpSouth Inc. will enable AT&T customers who bank with those companies to use their cells to check balances, transfer funds between accounts, and pay bills.

- AP

Sen. John Kerry urged Major League Baseball to hold off on a deal to put the sport's "Extra Innings" package of out-of-market games exclusively on DirecTV Group Inc. A top baseball official declined to agree, with opening day less than a week away. Kerry (D., Mass.) made the push at a Senate commerce committee hearing on behalf of subscribers to cable TV and EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network who had previously received the package.

- AP