Business news in brief

Flexcar, one of the nation's largest car-sharing companies, launched operations yesterday in its 11th U.S. city, Philadelphia. The Washington-based company, whose investors include AOL L.L.C. founder Steve Case, will start with 30 cars downtown and increase to 100 by the end of the year. Vehicles include hybrids, sedans, minivans, pickups and sports cars like Mini Coopers. "Philadelphia has the potential to be one of the strongest markets - if not the strongest market - in the United States for car-sharing," said Flexcar chief executive Mark Norman, who was a former president of DaimlerChrysler Canada. Earlier this year, Flexcar launched services in Baltimore and Gainesville, Fla. Philly CarShare, a nonprofit car-sharing service, already operates in Philadelphia.

- AP

The Philadelphia area's unemployment rate dropped four-tenths of a percentage point in February from January to 4.0 percent, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry said. The latest figure compared with a rate of 4.7 percent in February 2006. The number of unemployed people in February 2007 was 118,200, down 13,500 from January. The number with jobs rose just 600 in February from January to 2,850,200 - a sign that some people dropped out of the labor force in February. Those who stopped looking for work are not counted as unemployed. The local area consists of Southeastern Pennsylvania, much of southern New Jersey, New Castle County in Delaware, and Cecil County in Maryland.

- Paul Schweizer

Tenet Healthcare Corp., the largest publicly traded hospital company in the United States, completed the sale of Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia to the University of Pennsylvania for about $16.5 million. The sales agreement with the University of Pennsylvania Health System had been disclosed Jan. 23. With the announcement, the company has sold eight of 13 hospitals it plans to divest, Dallas-based Tenet said. In an unrelated announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges in federal court against Tenet and four former senior executives for failing to tell investors it was exploiting a Medicare loophole to boost earnings. Tenet agreed to pay $10 million to settle the charges. Tenet's scheme involved a loophole in the Medicare reimbursement system related to "outlier payments," which are designed to compensate hospitals for caring for extraordinarily sick patients.

- Bloomberg News

Merck & Co. Inc. said federal regulators had approved a new pill for Type 2 diabetes combining its drug Januvia with the current No. 1 treatment, metformin. Merck's new pill, called Janumet, is meant to be more convenient for certain patients while capturing for Merck part of the market for metformin, a generic treatment. Its benefit over current treatments is said to be fewer side effects and less weight gain, although it still carries several precautions and warnings. The list price of Janumet, a twice-a-day medication, will be $4.86 a day, Merck said. That is roughly the same price Merck put on Januvia alone when it was approved in January.

- Thomas Ginsberg

Air Products & Chemicals Inc., the Lehigh Valley-based manufacturer and distributor of industrial gases, said it would add capacity to its pipeline system by building a new hydrogen-production facility in Garyville, La. The facility will supply Marathon Petroleum Co. L.L.C.'s Garyville refinery and is expected to produce 120 million standard cubic feet a day by late 2009 - expanding in tandem with Marathon's expansion. It will also supply other Louisiana customers. Air Products brought six hydrogen plants into production in North America last year.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., which owns The Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com, said yesterday that it would begin publishing advertisements on the Inquirer's front page beginning April 15. The first front-page advertiser is the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which has scheduled ads every Sunday for a year. The cost of the advertisements, which will appear at the bottom right-hand corner, will be $17,500 for the daily Inquirer and $35,000 for the Sunday, a PMH media company executive said. But to get those rates, an advertiser has to buy 52 weeks of the same day, he said.

- Bob Fernandez

J&J Snack Foods Corp., Pennsauken, said it had bought Whole Fruit sorbet and Fruit-A-Freeze frozen fruit bar brands, as well as a Norwalk, Calif., factory used to make them, from CoolBrands International Inc., of Toronto. J&J, Pennsauken, did not disclose the price, but it said the acquired brands had $10 million in sales last year. The brands' sales have been declining for several years and are expected to be less than $2 million in the remainder of J&J's fiscal year, which ends in September, it said.

- Harold Brubaker

Vishay Intertechnology Inc. said it had completed its acquisition of International Rectifier's power control systems business for $290 million in cash. Vishay, of Malvern, a manufacturer of discrete semiconductors, said the acquired business had the potential to increase its net profit from the break-even point to $40 million by the March 2008 quarter. The new division has facilities in Italy, the United Kingdom, India and China.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

PT Petro Corp., a subsidiary of Lukoil Americas Corp., is closing distribution facilities in Paulsboro, Philadelpia and Malvern, laying off 32 workers, mostly truck drivers, company spokesman Joe Schwirtz said. He said Lukoil had decided to use outside haulers to make deliveries to its gasoline stations. Lukoil, East Meadow, N.Y., is also closing facilities in Revere, Mass., and Lawrence, N.Y. Additional layoffs are planned at six sites in Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey and New York.

- Harold Brubaker

The nation's manufacturing companies delivered a mixed assessment of their sector's health yesterday, reporting that business expanded at a slower-than-expected pace in March while prices for raw materials rose. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of corporate purchasing executives, said its manufacturing index registered 50.9 in March, below the February reading of 52.3 and Wall Street's expectation of 51.0. A reading above 50 indicates growth for the sector, while a reading below 50 indicates contraction.

- AP

The Treasury Department auctioned $17 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 4.910 percent, down from 4.925 percent last week. Another $14 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 4.870 percent, down from 4.875 percent. The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,875.89, while a six month bill sold for $9,753.79.

- Thomas J. Brady

The Federal Reserve said the average yield in the secondary market for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable-rate mortgages, dropped to 4.90 percent from 4.93 percent the previous week.

- Thomas J. Brady