Rosemont College in Rosemont has been planning a merger for a while, years, in fact, writes Ryan Mulligan for Philadelphia Business Journal.
Officials brought in a national consulting firm, assembled a list of potential partners, and began talking with several Pennsylvania universities and a local billionaire.
Villanova, the university now set to actually absorb Rosemont in a phased merger culminating in 2028, wasn’t an initial consideration.
Rosemont Board Chair Maria Feeley said non-disclosure agreements were signed with several institutions to discuss the possibility of a merger before Villanova was on the scene.
“Some of those options were very appealing, so we ended up getting pretty far down the road with those discussions and planning, and we hadn’t talked to Villanova at that time,” Feeley said.
Rosemont knew it would have trouble continuing on its own after it posted its fourth consecutive operating loss in 2023.
That’s when Beth Mazzeo called Feeley. She’s the COO of Bloomberg LP, and was named chair of Villanova’s board in 2023.
Villanova and Rosemont have an overlapping alumni network and history so the two started talking merger.
They brought in others, and in two weeks, four board leaders had a framework for a possible merger deal.
Read details about the merger agreement in the Philadelphia Business Journal.
