Alex

NEW YORK -- Only a few years after largely abandoning a move into the "junk" bond market that coincided with the 1980s boom and bust in dicey credits, Baltimore-based Alex. Brown quietly re-entered the market last year and has just registered for its first underwriting of new speculative debt.The deal, a $90 million financing for McGaw Inc., a producer of intravenous fluids, is intended to start a small but lucrative banking effort that will consummate as many as a dozen underwritings annually.

Donald B. Hebb Jr., president of Alex. Brown Inc. for the past six years, plans to leave that position early next year to return to the company's investment banking division, it was announced today.Hebb, 48, said his move is not connected with the downturn in the company's business, but rather he wants to return to investment banking. "I've done it [as president] for as long a period as I would like," he said today."Although participation in the management of the firm has been a rewarding and satisfying undertaking where I feel much has been accomplished, increasingly my interests lie with serving the firm's clients more directly," Hebb said in a prepared statement.

The business of making money for others remained remarkably lucrative last year, as the fourth-quarter earnings of two of Baltimore's largest investment firms show.Both mutual fund manager T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and Alex. Brown Inc., a brokerage and investment banking firm, reported record earnings yesterday.The stock market reacted favorably to Price's numbers, driving its stock up $1 a share on the day to close at $29.75 a share.Alex. Brown's shares rose $1.625, to $25.75 a share, although the company released its earnings after the market closed.

Mayo A. Shattuck III had just landed a job in Alex. Brown Inc.'s San Francisco office in November 1985, on the rebound from an uncertain future with a company whose prospects seemed murky. But it took less than a year -- and a little luck -- for him to land the deal that launched his career.His friend and former Stanford University classmate, Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems Inc., had just taken his computer manufacturing company public, but he needed more funds with which to expand.

Alex. Brown Inc., the Baltimore-based brokerage and investment banking firm, reported sharply lower profits in the fourth quarter as higher interest rates and stagnant stock and bond markets drove revenues down in most of the company's businesses.In the three months that ended Dec. 31, Alex. Brown's earnings fell 48 percent to $20.1 million, or $1.34 a share, from $38.9 million, or $2.42 a share, a year earlier. Revenues dropped 30 percent in the quarter, to $153.8 million.Without a gain of $7.8 million from the sale of a real estate advisory joint venture in December, earnings would have fallen roughly 68 percent in the quarter.

WASHINGTON -- J. Carter Beese Jr., a principal at Alex. Brown & Sons Inc. of Baltimore, testified before a Senate panel yesterday, moving one step closer to likely confirmation as a commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission.The 36-year-old Mr. Beese is viewed as a non-controversial candidate whose confirmation to the empty fifth seat of the SEC leadership is probably assured. It is practically unheard of for an SEC nominee not to be confirmed.Mr. Beese has worked at Alex. Brown -- the nation's oldest and one of its most prestigious securities firms -- since graduating from Rollins College in 1978.

Bernard E. Eberwein, a retired limited partner at Alex. Brown & Sons investment bankers, died Wednesday of heart failure at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Lutherville resident was 81.He joined Alex. Brown in 1934 and was a trader, manager of the firm's over-the-counter department, vice president and limited partner. He retired in 1986.Born in Baltimore, Mr. Eberwein lived near Clifton Park as a young man and graduated from Polytechnic Institute and the University of Baltimore.He served in the Maryland National Guard and was called to active duty during World War II. A junior warrant officer in the 110th Field Artillery, he landed at Normandy on D-Day.

Benjamin Howell Griswold III, who led the investment firm Alex. Brown & Sons for more than three decades and was a decorated World War II veteran and steeplechase rider, died of heart failure and stroke complications Saturday at his Monkton farm, Fancy Hill. He was 94. A great-great-great-grandson of Irish-born linen merchant Alexander Brown, he directed the firm's conversion to a corporation in 1983 after 178 years as a partnership. He also oversaw its 1974 acquisition of another old Baltimore business, Robert Garrett & Sons.

THERE WAS no formal announcement on the February day that Benjamin H. Griswold IV retired as senior chairman of Deutsche Bank Securities. Just a party in New York and words of thanks. But when the 64-year-old Griswold walked out the door, so did the last link to Alexander Brown, the man who started the first investment-banking house in the country, and to the seventh generation in his family to work at the firm. For the past six years, the former Alex. Brown chairman had worked at Deutsche Bank Securities, whose parent snapped up Brown when it bought Bankers Trust in 1999.

The second time's a charm. At least that's how it worked for Ronda Butler and Alex Washington. Ronda, 31, and Alex, 36, met the first time in 1997 when Alex answered Ronda's "telepersonal" advertisement -- a recording of the personal ad in the subject's own voice. After lengthy telephone conversations, the couple had their first date. Alex cooked Ronda dinner. By the time the meal was finished, Ronda was convinced that Alex was "too nice" for her. She thought he was the kind of man who couldn't hold his own in a relationship, "a cream puff that was always going to do what I would say," she explains.