Bank Of Baltimore

One of Towson's oldest bank buildings soon will be shuttered, creating another vacancy along York Road during a multimillion-dollar project to revitalize the aging business district.The NationsBank branch in the 500 block of York Road will close its doors July 11, consolidating services at a bank center a block away on Pennsylvania Avenue."We have a tremendous amount of overlap," said Dave Millman, NationsBank regional executive for suburban Baltimore. "Economically, it made no sense to keep that place open.

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.

First Mariner Bancorp will make hostile acquisitions if necessary to expand, Chairman Edwin Hale Sr. told shareholders yesterday at the 2-year-old local bank's annual meeting."

Shortly after a downtown bank was robbed yesterday, Baltimore police arrested a suspect who was in the stairwell of a building, changing his clothes.In a separate incident, police failed to capture a bank robber, who was stained with orange dye when a dye pack hidden among the currency exploded.The robberies brought to 133 the number of city banks robbed this year, compared with 75 at the same time last year, police said.About 9: 15 a.m. yesterday, a man told a teller at First National Bank in the 400 block of E. Pratt St. that he had a bomb and gave her a note demanding money, said Agent Robert W. Weinhold Jr., a city police spokesman.

First Union Corp. yesterday named a Mellon Bank Corp. executive to run its operations in the Baltimore area, setting new leadership for the operations that the Charlotte, N.C., banking titan took over when it bought First Fidelity Bancorp. in January.J. William "Bill" Knott, 38, was named president of the Baltimore region for First Union, which has 53 branches in the metropolitan area.The bank also announced that J. Scott Wilfong has been promoted to the post of commercial banking executive for the state of Maryland.

First Mariner Bancorp reached into its founder's past yesterday to find a new president and tapped former Bank of Baltimore executive Joseph L. Cicero to take the No. 2 job at the 18-month-old Baltimore community bank.At First Mariner, Cicero will be president and chief operating officer of the holding company and chief operating officer of First Mariner Bank, its main subsidiary. George Mantakos will remain president of the bank and a director of the holding company.Cicero became chief financial officer of Baltimore Bancorp, which owned the Bank of Baltimore, after Edwin F. Hale ousted the company's former management in a bitter proxy contest.

Crestar Financial Corp., in an effort to enhance its image after purchasing Loyola Capital Corp., will move its regional headquarters downtown by late October and bring with it 100 jobs.Crestar's commitment for three top floors in a skyscraper at 120 E. Baltimore St. through 2006 marks one of several shifts to the city's business core by white-collar employers.On Friday, for instance, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is expected to announce that McDonald's Corp. will also relocate its regional headquarters downtown from Columbia, bringing more than 60 professionals to the 26-story 250 W. Pratt St. office tower.

Kenneth H. Trout is a man of special talents: he can see 200 years into the future and the past at the same time.Yesterday that talent was on display as Mr. Trout, president and chief executive officer of Signet Bank/Maryland, led a celebration of Signet's 200th year in the state.The company was founded in 1795 as the Bank of Baltimore (not to be confused with the former Savings Bank of Baltimore, now owned by First Fidelity Bancorp.). In 1929, soon after the stock market crash, the bank was acquired by the then-31-year-old Union Trust Co. of Maryland.

The Carousel Hotel & Resort, the 21-story Ocean City tourist destination taken over last year by the former Bank of Baltimore, has been sold for roughly $7 million to a partnership led by a Pennsylvania heart surgeon.Four Star Enterprises, a partnership formed by Dr. Siamak Hamzavi, intends to invest at least $3 million into restoring the hotel, one of the premier lodging properties in the Maryland resort town in the late 1960s."Dr. Hamzavi has been in the hotel business before, he enjoyed it, and wanted to embark on a new project," said Nick D. Sura Jr., the hotel's new chief financial officer.

The Federal Reserve Board gave First Union Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., and First Fidelity Bancorp. approval yesterday to merge, creating the nation's sixth-largest banking company.The company, which will operate under the First Union name, will have $126 billion in assets, run the nation's largest branchnetwork and cover 12 Eastern states and Washington, D.C.The Fed's decision follows an overwhelming vote by First Union and First Fidelity shareholders earlier this month to approve the merger.

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.

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.

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 resided at the Edenwald Retirement Community in Towson for 18 years, was 92. Born 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.

WHAT DOES Baltimore lack that Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Washington have? Those cities, and others, have community development banks that help revitalize inner cities. Baltimore's previous attempt to get one fell flat on its face about five years ago because of a lack of capitalization. Given the financial trends in Baltimore City, this is both shameful and devastating to the city's poor. The result? A startling level of disinvestment leaves residents able to pay bills but with no way to save for the future.

I'VE ALWAYS admired the fine Georgian-style windows, slate roof and brickwork of 3903 Greenway, the house that has been in the news of late as the home of Mark L. Perkins, the recently resigned president of Towson University, which somehow wound up with a $2 million bill attached. It is one of many stately Guilford mansions on a street that looks dreamy on a cool April evening, when the whole neighborhood is all pink, purple, white and light green, thanks to a spectacular show of vegetation and the presence of some dedicated gardeners.