Balance Sheet

Baltimore Bancorp's third-quarter earnings, reported yesterday, were a bit shy on profits, compared with recent history. But analysts said the company's decision to focus instead on improving its balance sheet would have benefits that extend far beyond one quarterly report.Baltimore Bancorp's $1.6 million earnings in the third quarter, worth 10 cents a share, was the seventh consecutive quarterly profit. It was a 52 percent decrease from the $3.3 million, or 26 cents a share, earned a year earlier.

NEW YORK -- By day, he is one of Gotham's mild-mannered international bankers. By night, dressed in dark tails and a crisp white tie, his passion is music. Yet most New York music buffs had not heard Richard Westerfield of J.P. Morgan conduct an orchestra until last week.In what has turned out to be Lincoln Center's version of a Cinderella story, Mr. Westerfield is winding up a series of performances tonight with the New York Philharmonic. Last Wednesday, the 35-year-old conductor was tapped at the last minute to stand in for Erich Leinsdorf, the famed European conductor and a frequent Philharmonic guest conductor, who had to bow out of his scheduled performance because of a back injury.

NEW YORK -- The biggest charges for adopting a new accounting standard for post-retirement benefits might be yet to come.The $19.85 billion in new liabilities that appeared recently on the balance sheets of 22 of the nation's best-known companies is likely to pale in comparison to the charges that will show up when the remaining eight members of the Dow Jones industrial average adopt the standard.The new charges will amount to at least $25.65 billion and could run as high as $37.35 billion, according to estimates by General Motors Corp.

From houses all over Maryland and Delaware, the wastepaper flows to Baltimore by the truckload: old newspapers, junk mail, boxes, phone books.From Howard and Baltimore counties in the Baltimore area; from Calvert and Charles counties in Southern Maryland; from Wicomico, Queen Anne's, Kent and Talbot counties and Ocean City on the Eastern Shore; and from Cecil County and drop-off centers all over Delaware, the trucks come laden with paper. They converge on the waterfront warehouse on Clinton Street, drive up a ramp and dump their loads -- about 150 tons every working day -- on the second floor.

Paris. -- A year has passed since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Blockade, war and civil insurrection have followed. Kuwait has been freed of Iraqi occupation. Otherwise, nothing has been settled, although much has happened.A judgment on the year's consequences must be provisional. The war cannot even be said to be fully over, since an allied re-intervention force is being constituted in Turkey. The situation of the Kurds and of Iraq's Shiite minority remains fragile. Iraq's nuclear and chemical disarmament remains incomplete.

Abbott Labs"Abbott Labs (ABT, NYSE, around $50) derives 60 percent of operating profits from pharmaceutical and nutritional products, with the remainder coming from hospital and laboratory supplies.Both divisions have double-digit sales and earnings momentum," says Dow Theory Forecasts of Hammond, Ind., "but the March-quarter performance in pharmaceuticals was outstanding."Drug sales jumped about 40 percent . . . Earnings growth should accelerate over the next three years."Jan Bell Marketing"Jan Bell Marketing (JMB, AMEX, around $12)