Chester County business daily news briefs review yesterday’s business stories important to Chester County and beyond.

Great Valley, Unionville Make Magazine’s Top High School’s List

Two Chester County High Schools, Great Valley High School in Malvern and Unionville High School in Kennett Square, made U.S. News & World Report list of Top 20 performing high schools in Pennsylvania released on Tuesday. The two schools were ranked 7th and 8th respectively.

Aside from Great Valley and Unionville, Kennett High School (#32) and Avon Grove High School (#35) are the only two Chester County high schools to make it into the the magazine’s list of top 50 PA high schools.

The Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School, a Philadelphia public school, came out on top in Pennyslvania.

Despite being listed as Pennsylvania’s most challenging high school by the Washington Post in both 2014 and 2015, Downingtown’s STEM Academy was not included on the weekly magazine’s list of top 50 Pennsylvania high schools.

Vaguard Group Is duPont’s Single Largest Shareholder

Always on the troll for interesting Vanguard Group stats, this one came across our desk courtesy of a DelawareOnline story of the proxy fight currently be waged by a a New York hedge fund over four of the seats on the company’s twelve-seat board.

The Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa, is DuPont’s largest stock holder with 50 million shares, or 5.5 percent of the company, according to research from Morningstar.

The duPont ownership stat is in line with a statement Vanguard’s CEO William McNabb made last year to a group of University of Delaware students that Vanguard owned five percent or more of every publicly traded company in the United States.

For the record, State Street Capital and Capital World are DuPont’s second and third largest shareholders, followed by Black Rock Fund Advisors  at the number four position and Fidelity Fund Management at number six.

Vanguard, nor any of the top shareholders for that matter, are saying which way it will vote its 50 million shares in the pending proxy fight over board seats at the venerable Delaware-based chemical manufacturer.

West Pharmaceutical Will Develop Two R&D Centers And Expand Exton Center.

West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE: WST), a global leader in innovative packaging components and drug delivery systems, announced a multi-year investment as part of the Company’s evolving R&D strategy yesterday.

To better support pharmaceutical customers around the world, West will add capabilities to all of its global Packaging Systems R&D facilities, including a significant expansion of its Exton center, and develop two new R&D Centers of Excellence—one in the Asia Pacific region and one in Europe—to leverage regional capabilities and expertise in parenteral drug packaging.

The facility in Europe will be the Company’s Center of Excellence for drug vial and cartridge seals, plastic technology and packaging component materials development, and will be on line by the end of 2016.

The Company’s location in the Asia Pacific region will serve as a Center of Excellence for innovation across all technologies specific to the emerging markets and is expected to be operational by the end of 2015.

AmerisourceBergen Execs Cash In On Company’s Strong Results

Two AmerisourceBergen (NYSE: ABC) executives traded in just over 100,000 shares for good old fashion, hard, cold cash this week for a combined haul of $ 11,571,547.

The executives, EVP John Chou, who traded 78,656 shares at an average price of $115.24 and SVP Lazarus Krikorian who sold 21,802 at about $115.40 a share, both took advantage of strong quarterly and annual sales and profitability results turned in by the Chesterbrook drug distributor and subsequent run up in the company’s share price on Wall Street.

AmerisourceBergen shares are up $25 since January having almost doubled in value from May 2014.

National Parks Service Leases Wayne Property

The Philadelphia Business Journal reported earlier this week The National Park Service has leased the 5,000-square-foot Philander Chase Knox house to Valley Forge Park Events for a 10-year period.

According to Wikipedia, Philander Chase Knox Philander was an American lawyer, bank director and politician who served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania and in the Cabinet under three presidents.

The house is located just inside of Chester County off of Yellow Springs Road near the covered bridge over Valley Creek.

Park Events will operate the house as an event venue that can accommodate up to 200 guests.