Bank Of Baltimore

Some in the industry characterize the practice as business raiding. But the Bank of Baltimore defends its aggressive campaign to persuade customers to transfer their home-equity loan balances to the bank from other institutions and says it's been very effective."

This weekend you may notice former Wachovia branches around Baltimore getting a makeover, swapping out their old logos for brand new Wells Fargo signs. While Wells Fargo has been busy promoting the new and improved services customers will receive, people in my east side neighborhood can't forget all the old services the bank brought to Baltimore during the height of the housing bubble. From 2005 to 2009, Wells Fargo was Baltimore's biggest mortgage lender, and it issued more high-cost subprime loans than any other bank.

Mark L. Wasserman, who spun a city-planning degree into a career that touched the top levels of state government, said yesterday that his next job will be helping to drum up customers for First Fidelity Bank's Bank of Baltimore division.One of Gov. William Donald Schaefer's closest aides, Mr. Wasserman will become vice president and manager of business and government affairs for the bank on Jan. 23.As now understood, his duties will consist mainly of helping to boost the Bank of Baltimore's commercial loan portfolio from its present 8 percent of assets.

The last time regulators ordered Ed Hale to fix a money-losing bank or have it seized by the government was the early 1990s. The trucking executive had gained control of the Bank of Baltimore, which lent itself into trouble in the last real estate crash. Hale and other dissident shareholders took over the board, pulled the bank from a pit and made millions of dollars when they sold it to First Fidelity a couple of years later. Now that 1st Mariner Bank is in the same flavor of soup, Hale is suggesting he can pull off a similar rescue.

First Fidelity Bancorp. announced today that it will cut the staff of its newly acquired Bank of Baltimore unit by half as part of a larger drive to cut costs throughout the $36 billion bank holding company, which is based in Newark, N.J.The cuts are much deeper than First Fidelity had said it would make when its deal to acquire Baltimore Bancorp, the Bank of Baltimore's former parent company, was announced last March. At a press conference the day the deal was disclosed, First Fidelity chief financial officer Wolfgang Schoellkopf said he expected to reduce the Maryland staff by about 25 percent.

Baltimore Bancorp, parent of the Bank of Baltimore and one of the last big locally based banking companies, yesterday ended a wild three-year ride for its employees and shareholders by announcing it has agreed to be sold to the First Fidelity Bancorp. of Lawrenceville, N.J., for $346 million in cash.If approved by regulators and Baltimore Bancorp's shareholders, the deal, valued at $20.75 a share, would be First Fidelity's initial move into Maryland. The company, which has 650 branches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, is the nation's 24th-largest banking company, with $33.8 billion in assets.

The Bank of Baltimore has won the bid for the $24 million home equity portfolio of Yorkridge-Calvert Savings and Loan Association. The purchase price was not disclosed.Yorkridge was taken over by federal regulators in December 1989 because of financial problems. At the time it was the 10th largest savings and loan in Maryland.The purchase will be made through the Resolution Trust Corp., a federal agency that is handling insolvent thrifts.Home-equity loans are secured by the borrowers' homes.

The stockholder vote turning over control of Baltimore Bancorp to dissident shareholders has been certified by the Corporation Trust Co., the company that counted the votes.The certification yesterday brings to an end a six-month effort by a group lead by Baltimore Blast owner Edwin F. Hale to seize control of the parent company of the Bank of Baltimore.The bank also announced that Richard P. Manekin and M. Peter Moser have resigned from the board, leaving only nine holdover board members on the newly enlarged 28-person board.

First Union Corp., the nation's sixth largest banking company, has agreed to buy Richmond-based Signet Banking Corp. for $3.3 billion, according to industry sources last night.Details of the merger, which would be one of the most expensive in banking history, were sketchy. But Signet, which has $12 billion in assets, has been struggling for more than a year and a half and just recently announced a company-wide restructuring.Executives of First Union could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Signet declined to confirm or deny that a deal had been struck.

An employee of the Howard County government was arrested yesterday by the FBI and charged with bilking Citizens Bank of Maryland of $93,000 through a mounting check-kiting scheme that required her to visit the Ellicott City bank nearly every business day for six years.Federal agents arrested Lavida B. Smith, 40, of Columbia shortly before noon at the offices of the county Department of Finance in Ellicott City, where she has worked for the past 10 years as an administrative aide.Although county officials said they planned to perform an audit of the department's books over the next few weeks, investigators said they had as yet no evidence that county money was used in the check-cashing scheme.

If all First Mariner Bancorp's shareholders were as loyal as Frank Wesolowski, the company's stock would still be at $10 or $15. Wesolowski is a retired pharmacist from Edgemere, where First Mariner honcho Edwin Hale Sr. grew up and launched a real estate and shipping kingdom. He watched Hale win a proxy war for control of the Bank of Baltimore in the early 1990s. He figured Hale's new bank, founded in 1995, could fill vacancies left by Bank of Baltimore and other lenders that got sold to out-of-towners.

Meet the new American lender. M&T Bank Corp., which said yesterday that it will buy Baltimore's Provident Bankshares, will typify U.S. finance in the next few years. Big. Based somewhere else. But something that looks like an old-fashioned bank, with branch offices and lollipops next to the teller. FDIC-insured. No investment banking division. No Masters of the Universe deal makers. No 30 dollars borrowed for every one dollar of capital. A lineup that recently would have seemed terribly dull for consumers as well as shareholders now looks very attractive.

As somebody who often preaches the virtues of free capital, surely I would be churlish to complain that Baltimore's biggest remaining bank is being bought by out-of-towners. Pittsburgh's PNC Financial is buying Mercantile Bankshares for what the market valued yesterday as about $45 per share - the highest price ever commanded by the stock. The efficiencies from the combination will contribute to the kind of productivity growth that is essential if the U.S. economy is going to pay its debts and finance Social Security in coming decades.

Wachovia Corp. publicly apologized yesterday for two predecessor institutions that owned slaves or allowed them to be used as collateral, and it revealed that two of Baltimore's oldest banks profited indirectly from slavery. The nation's fourth-largest bank disclosed its ties to the slave trade in a 111-page report to comply with a Chicago ordinance requiring companies that do business with the city to determine whether they had profited from slavery, which was abolished by the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

Howard K. Thompson, the founder of an architectural woodworking business who became a savings and loan association official, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The former Original Northwood resident, who lived at the Edenwald Retirement Community in Towson for 18 years, was 92. Born in Trenton, N.J., he was a descendant of the Alden family of New England. He earned an industrial arts degree from the old College of Trenton. He joined Trenton's Winner Manufacturing Co. and helped make light-wood, rubber-covered rafts for the Navy during World War II. He later became involved with the early production of modular homes.

Will the Old Goucher Historic District become Baltimore's next hot neighborhood? The answer could depend on what happens to one of the district's most prominent buildings when it goes up for auction next week. The former headquarters of the Federal Land Bank of Baltimore, built starting in 1926 at 2315 St. Paul St., will be offered for sale at 2 p.m. Dec. 14. Now largely vacant, the six-story structure is one of the largest office buildings in the historic district where Goucher College operated before moving to Baltimore County in the 1940s.

Frank A. Vavrina, retired assistant treasurer of what is now the Bank of Baltimore, died Sunday of pneumonia at the Manor Care Towson Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.Mr. Vavrina, 85, of Malcolm Circle in Cockeysville, retired 20 years ago from the Savings Bank of Baltimore, where he had started 50 years earlier as a runner.The Baltimore native attended Polytechnic Institute and took American Institute of Banking Courses. Fond of golf, he was a member of the Country Club of Maryland.He is survived by his wife, the former Dorothy Finnerty; a daughter, Jane Bittner of Baltimore; a son, Robert F. Vavrina of Annapolis; a brother, Vernon Vavrina of Pikesville; two sisters, Eleanor Klein of Timonium and Rosalie Dzbinski of Forest Hill; eight grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

A U.S. District Court judge sentenced a Columbia woman yesterday to five months in prison for a five-year check-kiting scheme in which she stole over $78,000 from an Ellicott City bank.Lavida B. Smith, 40, was also ordered to pay Citizens Bank of Maryland $25,200 in restitution over a three-year probation period. Under an agreement with the bank, Smith will continue making monthly payments of $700 until the remainder of the stolen money is paid back.Judge Marvin J. Garbis also required Smith to serve an additional five months in home detention.

William Anthony Beasman Jr., a former teller who rose to the Savings Bank of Baltimore's presidency and worked to keep local ownership of the Orioles, died Sunday of complications from diabetes and heart disease at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 82 and lived in Northwood. A business leader, Mr. Beasman started as a teller at the bank at Charles and Baltimore streets in 1947. He retired 41 years later as chairman emeritus. He also was a former director of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland, the Pride of Baltimore Foundation and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.