PhillyDeals: A financial field goal for Lincoln National

Government "bailouts" are working, for example, for Lincoln National Corp., best known in Philadelphia as corporate sponsor of Lincoln Financial Field, home of the Eagles.

Shares rose almost 14 percent in trading yesterday as the Radnor insurer reported better-than-expected profit and lower-than-expected costs.

Lincoln shares lost 90 percent of their value last fall and winter on fears that life insurers would fail as investment banks did. Then Lincoln negotiated a $950 million investment from the U.S. Treasury, boosting Lincoln's capital reserve and reducing its financing costs.

Lincoln paid Treasury $16 million last quarter

and will pay about $18 million in the current quarter for the use of that money, chief financial officer Frederick J. Crawford told investors in a conference call.

Ace Ltd., a global property insurer run from offices in Zurich, Switzerland; New York; and Old City Philadelphia, also reports a bigger jump in earnings, thanks to recovering investment values, a lack of costly summer storms - and successful competition with larger players suc as government-backed American International Group Inc.

Evan Greenberg, the chief executive officer of Ace and son of former AIG boss Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, says he is not cutting premiums to win business. "There are some cowboys out there," Evan Greenberg said. "There are guys writing [policies] at what, we think, are pretty nuts terms."

He calls them "gentlemen's clubs" so people will think "it's a cut above" the old-time strip bars, says Alan Markovitz, Detroit-based partner in the new Penthouse Club on Castor Avenue near Allegheny.

Markovitz says he got into the business as a college-kid bartender in 1970s suburban Detroit, lost his virginity to a dancer, and decided, "This is for me."

He parlayed an investment from his Holocaust-survivor, TV-repairman father into a collection that currently numbers seven topless clubs in Michigan, Florida, and now Pennsylvania.

Markovitz says he bought rights to use the Penthouse Club name from the bankrupt magazine publisher, which introduced him to his Philadelphia partners, including construction contractor Mike Rose and boxer-turned-towing-and-salvage operator Anthony "TKO" Boyle.

"Alan designed everything," Boyle told me. "It's extravagant, compared to the other Philly clubs. I didn't want to show my wife the bathrooms; she might get ideas."

Markovitz says the partners spent $5 million adding adornments like "a big martini glass that comes out on stage - it's very theatrical, like a rock show."

Tough time with L&I? "I found this city to be the best I've dealt with," Markovitz said. "They weren't out to give us a hard time." Boyle's city ties helped, he added.

Cover charge is $10, and beers cost $6.50, $2 cheaper than he gets away with in recession-plastered Detroit. "The price points are too low here," he complains, citing rivals such as Delilah's Den.

In Detroit, Big Three auto contractors and clients kept his joints busy. But in Philadelphia, there's little business-lunch trade for the bar.

In his new self-published book, Topless Prophet, Markovitz claims credit for innovations now widespread.

He modeled his first bar's appearance on TGI Friday's, and called the cops on outlaw bikers flouting the patron dress code.

Instead of paying "girls" an hourly wage, Markovitz and his competitors began demanding a fee of $30 to $80 a shift, let the dancers keep whatever else their customers pay them, and called them contractors. "Most of the girls are pretty independent anyway," Markovitz explained.

Though he does buy workers' comp: "Once in a while, a girl falls off a stage."

Dancers perform on mini-stages for individual customers or small groups. That includes lap dances that could get you kicked off a school dance floor. Though "no sexual solicitation or drugs," Markovitz insists. "We fire you."

Markovitz says his clubs employ "several hundred" bouncers, food-service people, and dancers, and they fire 20 percent of the staff a year. Dancers last maybe two years, on average.

"Young girls are way more wild than 20 years ago," Markovitz complains. He blames it on the plague of fatherless households. But he says a show of respect to the girls goes a long way.