PNC buys National City, PHUL buys local

PNC Financial Services Group (PNC) today announced that it will acquire National City Corp. (NCC) for 5.6 Billion dollars. The market has been speculating on this for the past two weeks, and the PHUL Administration has been hoping for it for the past 2 years. We haven't quite had the cash on hand to buy National City ourselves, so PHUL applauds James Rohr (CEO, PNC) and PNC for this move.

National City held PHUL's first bank account, and has always been good to us, but over the past years PHUL closed all accounts with National City and moved them over to PNC. We even worked to bring the CPU (Community for Pittsburgh Ultimate) accounts over, despite some internal resistance. We just didn't feel it right to keep our cash with a bank who shares the same home with the Cleveland Browns. We are the Pittsburgh High School Ultimate League after all.

This lead to a focus in past years to partnering with local companies and our community. We created a scholarship for students attending universities in the Greater Pittsburgh Area, and housed it at the Pittsburgh Foundation. The initial boost that we needed to get the scholarship off the ground was given by local entrepreneur Henry Thorne who co-founded Pittsburgh based Aethon and Thorley Industries. Poiesis Informatics, a local company founded by 3 Ultimate players, supports that same scholarship.

PHUL moved our T-shirt ordering to Kaules Screen Works in the North Hills. Sourcing our shirts locally not only eliminated shipping costs, which saved PHUL players' money, it also allowed us a faster turn-around time for our order, and gave an opportunity for a current PHUL player to intern at the screen works company. The list goes on and we're always looking for ways to work with the community to improve our city as well as our league. As PHUL mentions to potential sponsors and partners: "Our league is here, our friends are here. We, like you, call Pittsburgh our home and are working to make it an even better place to work and play."

We're proud of the win-win situations we've been able to create with the other great Pittsburgh organizations and we're excited to find our new home in Lawrenceville, where the PHUL/CPU office is now based. We've received a warm welcome from Helen McMullen, owner of Perk Me Up coffee house, and now that we've got our morning brew, we're ready to meet the rest of the neighbors and shake this place up.