PhillyDeals: Despite the times, medical tech firm thrives

'We're one of the few companies that's hiring. We're doubling our sales force this year," says

Randy H. Thurman

, who took over as chief executive officer of

CardioNet Inc.

and moved the headquarters to Conshohocken from San Diego after it went public last year.

CardioNet makes wireless heart-arrhythmia monitors, the kind of technology that might save users money and maintain good health, making it possible to sell even when the economy is slow. It agreed to buy Biotel Inc., of Eagan, Minn., yesterday. Biotel makes another line of monitors.

CardioNet employs about 800 - 440 in Conshohocken, 40 more in Chester, plus the tech center in San Diego, and offices in Florida and Georgia. It will pick up an additional 50 with its planned purchase of Biotel.

After years as a venture capital-backed firm, CardioNet went public at $17.70 in March 2008. It closed yesterday at $27.40, down a nickel for the day but up over the past difficult year on rising sales and modest profit.

Why Conshohocken? Thurman says he has good luck running Philly-area companies. He was president of the former Collegeville-based Rhone-Poulenc Rorher Inc., and he ran Conshohocken medical-equipment-maker Viasys Healthcare Inc., from 2000 until it was bought by Cardinal Health Inc. for $1.5 billion last year.

Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the longtime chief executive officer of American International Group Inc., was back on Capitol Hill yesterday, telling a generally polite but more or less skeptical House committee why the company's $180 billion federal bailout isn't necessary and wasn't his fault.

"I don't think it was the regulators who fell asleep. I do know the management fell asleep," opined Greenberg, forced out in 2005 amid a string of financial scandals. "You have very good state regulators."

Count U.S. Reps. Melissa Bean (D., Ill.) and Ed Royce (R., Calif.) with the skeptics. As Greenberg spoke, they were announcing a bill to "create a robust federal regulator for insurance to act as an alternative to the antiquated, nonuniform system of state insurance regulators currently in operation."

Greenberg called the AIG bailout "a failure," said an AIG bankruptcy "would have been less catastrophic," and agreed the government should try to get money back from banks and other AIG clients.

Why stop there? Last week the Government Accountability Office suggested the government take back, not just AIG's payments to banks, but some executive bonuses.

Greenberg won't go that far. "If the compensation is not competitive with the marketplace, it doesn't help to have people that will not perform at the level you want them to perform because they're not being compensated adequately," he said. Though, he admitted, "compensation in the financial sector got out of hand."

Metro Bancorp Inc. has lured a cluster of Commerce Bank veterans to join Metro Bank, the new Republic First Bank + Commerce Bank of Pennsylvania combination backed by Commerce founder Vernon Hill.

Stephen McWilliams, who ran TD Bank N.A.'s 25-branch network in Chester and Delaware Counties, joined Metro as senior vice president and senior commercial lender.

He follows Metro's new retail chief, Rhonda Costello; chief operating and information officer Andrew Logue, marketing boss Kevin Barry, cash management head Janet Roig, and chief credit officer Jay Neilon. All traded TD (which absorbed the old Commerce Bank) for Metro.

"Red is back," said McWilliams in a statement, citing Metro's new red M logo, reminiscent of the old Commerce C logo. They're in pep-rally mode over there.

But Commerce employed more than 16,000, all told, and "the senior leadership team from Commerce remains at TD," says TD spokesman Neil Parmenter. Fred Graziano, Commerce head for central Jersey, now runs TD's "thousand-plus stores from New England to Florida."

Nice to see competition, when it means more jobs, better service, and lower prices.