Business news in brief

A management buyout is in the works at Pennsylvania Trust Co., Radnor, a subsidiary of Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co. since 1991, the parent company said. The price for Pennsylvania Trust, which was founded in 1986 and has $1.7 billion under management, according to Penn Mutual, was not disclosed. Penn Mutual, Horsham, said Pennsylvania Trust's focus on the Philadelphia region did not match its own national footprint or the more extensive East Coast presence of another subsidiary, Janney Montgomery Scott L.L.C., Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Trust, headed by Richardson T. Merriman, applied to the Pennsylvania Department of Banking for approval of the deal, Penn Mutual said. Pennsylvania Trust is a state-chartered non-depository trust company. - Harold Brubaker

Phoenixville Federal Bank & Trust agreed last week to a cease-and-desist order with the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, according to a public filing. The agreement restricts commercial lending at the Phoenixville mutual savings bank, bars dividends without prior regulatory approval, and requires the bank to add three qualified independent directors. Richard A. Kunsch Sr., Phoenixville Federal's chief executive, said Monday that the OTS' concerns centered on the bank's commercial lending department, which was started four years ago, when the economy was booming. The OTS issued the order after finding fault with the bank's response to a supervisory agreement in December 2008, Kunsch said. The bank has hired a credit administrator and is using outside firms to review loans and policies to gain the blessing of the OTS. Kunsch said the bank earned $2.3 million last year, even after setting aside $1.9 million in reserve for possible loan losses. - Harold Brubaker

Carpenter Technology Corp., Wyomissing, said it bought Amega West Services L.L.C. for $54 million. Amega West, Houston, makes components for oil and natural gas drilling equipment. It was owned by private investors, including employees. Carpenter, a maker of specialty steels, said the purchase would expand its sales in the energy market. - Paul Schweizer

The engineering-services firm WPCS International Inc., Exton, said it had been awarded about $10.7 million in new contracts. The contracts in the United States include those for the Pocono Medical Center, and the Town of Narragansett, R.I. There also were several international contracts, in Australia, the company said. - Roslyn Rudolph

Vantage Point Bank, a Fort Washington lender with $73.2 million in assets as of Sept. 30, said it applied for $2.9 million from the Treasury Department's $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund. The fund was created through the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 to give banks with assets less than $10 billion additional capital to make certain kinds of loans to small businesses. Vantage Point has one office and was established in December 2007. - Harold Brubaker

A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to being available at a doctor's office. Boston scientists who invented the test and health-care giant Johnson & Johnson announced they were joining forces to bring it to market. Stray cancer cells in the blood mean that a tumor has spread or is likely to, many doctors believe. A test that can capture such cells has the potential to transform care for many types of cancer, especially breast, prostate, colon, and lung. - AP

Thirteen companies whose deepwater drilling activities were suspended last year may be able to resume drilling without detailed environmental reviews, the Obama administration said. The companies - which include Chevron USA Inc. and Shell Offshore Inc. - will be allowed to resume work at previously drilled wells, as long as they meet new policies and regulations, officials said. After the disastrous BP spill in April, the Obama administration pledged it would require companies to complete environmental reviews before being allowed to drill for oil. - AP

Fiat split its industrial-vehicle business from its automaking unit Monday in a move aimed at giving birth to a global automotive company with Chrysler L.L.C. The shift was complete with Fiat Industrial's debut on the Milan Stock Exchange. Fiat took a 20 percent controlling share of Chrysler in 2009, and analysts expect the companies to merge, although Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said he had no immediate plans to do so. The spin-off is designed to give each of the two businesses more agility. - AP

Microsoft Corp. said it had resolved a glitch that caused some Hotmail users temporarily to lose all their e-mail. In some cases, e-mail messages were mistakenly sent to their deleted mail folders. A Microsoft spokeswoman said Monday that all the affected users had their e-mail back. On Saturday, she noted that the problem applied to a limited number of people. Microsoft said 17,355 people had lost their e-mail messages. - AP

Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in Monday's auction. The Treasury Department auctioned $29 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.150 percent, down from 0.180 percent last week. An additional $28 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.190 percent, down from 0.225 percent last week. The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,996.21 while a six-month bill sold for $9,990.39. - AP

The Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable-rate mortgages, was unchanged at 0.30 percent last week from the previous week. - AP