Bank Officials

WASHINGTON -- Arriving as president of the World Bank in the summer of 2005, Paul D. Wolfowitz told colleagues that he was eager to tackle poverty in Africa and corruption in aid. But almost immediately he became consumed by frustrating negotiations with bank officials over the status of his companion, an employee at the bank, documents released this month show. Now these documents are at the center of the World Bank's inquiry into his conduct and Wolfowitz's defense, both of which will be presented at the World Bank's board of directors tomorrow.

First Mariner Bancorp, the Baltimore parent of First Mariner Bank, reported yesterday a nearly 60 percent increase in second-quarter net income and assets.First Mariner said it earned $241,619, or 8 cents a share, for the quarter that ended June 30, up from $153,595, or 5 cents a share, for the same period last year. Assets increased to $563.1 million from $353.0 million.The banking company also said its board of directors declared a cash dividend of 2 cents a common share payable Aug. 31 to shareholders of record on Aug. 17."

In late fall 1994, five men huddled behind closed doors to plot the ouster of Jan W. Clark as president of the Bank of Glen Burnie.Four of them were officials or major stockholders of the bank, but the fifth was an outsider whose presence at the meeting raises troubling questions about the management of the bank.He was Brian H. Davis, president of a Baltimore trucking company, a high-rolling political money man -- and a man who later pleaded guilty to obtaining millions of dollars in illegal loans from the bank.

A man who claimed to have a bomb in an orange and white cooler robbed the Brooklyn Park branch of First Union Bank yesterday of an undisclosed amount of money, county police said.The cooler was empty.The bank robbery was the fourth in Anne Arundel in a week. County police and FBI agents said they didn't think it was related to the others.The man walked into the bank branch in the 5400 block of Ritchie Highway just before 11 a.m. with the medium-sized cooler, told an employee it contained a bomb and demanded money, police said.

F. Ward DeGrange was one of those men who made the sprawling, chrome-plated suburb of Glen Burnie take on the warmth of an old-fashioned small town.Mr. DeGrange, who died of cancer last Friday, began working with his father's construction company in the early 1940s, and helped to build more than 100 homes in the fast-growing community. In 1948, as the Glen Burnie building boom accelerated, he and his father founded DeGrange Lumber Co., a family business that now employs Mr. DeGrange's four sons.

F. Ward DeGrange was one of those men who made the sprawling, chrome-plated suburb of Glen Burnie seem like an old-fashioned small town.Mr. DeGrange, who died of cancer last Friday, began working with his father's construction company in the early 1940s, and helped to build more than 100 homes in the community. In 1948, as the Glen Burnie building boom accelerated, he and his father founded DeGrange Lumber Co., a family business that now employs Mr. DeGrange's four sons.Mr. DeGrange not only helped to build Glen Burnie, he helped to sustain it. He was active in Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, the Glen Burnie Improvement Association and the Kiwanis Club.

NEW YORK -- Daiwa Bank Ltd. yesterday admitted it told a bond trader to continue concealing $1.1 billion in Treasury losses after he confessed making unauthorized trades to them.The bank's admission came after the trader, Toshihide Iguchi, 44, pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to the huge fraud. The New York trader, who is cooperating with authorities, testified that bank officials told him to keep hiding his losses.The role that Daiwa officials played in one of the largest bank scandals in history is now under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

MOSCOW -- The men in camouflage fatigues and ski masks, armed with powerful automatic rifles and grenade launchers, were clearly on serious business -- but the frantic management of Moscow's most powerful and politically well-connected bank spent all of yesterday trying to figure out who they were and what they wanted.They followed Vladimir Gusinsky, president of Most Bank, from his home to his office yesterday morning. They spent the daylight hours in parked cars, across the street from bank headquarters, at the front of the Russian White House.

The Farm Credit Bank of Baltimore is preparing to sell its Baltimore County headquarters as part of a planned merger with a sister institution in South Carolina.The bank's three-story building and surrounding 120 acres is notable because it represents one of the largest existing office properties to come on the market in the past five years.Real estate analysts expect the state's largest agricultural lender will receive at least $12 million for the Sparks headquarters building and adjacent land, based on recent comparable sales.

First National Bank's branch in Greenmount is to be replaced by a drive-up automated teller machine by the end of the summer, bank officials confirmed yesterday.The Hanover Pike office, which is scheduled to close Sept. 2, will be consolidated with the Hampstead branch, said Peter Floeckher, regional vice president for First National's northern region."Banks are opening more and more as retail outlets, selling financial products," he said. "We want to grow in new areas of the county, but before we put up new stores, we have to see where we can consolidate."

Eastern Savings Bank of Hunt Valley sought to calm nervous depositors yesterday after an erroneous television news report said the bank could close amid financial troubles. Though later corrected, the mistake sparked dozens of calls to the bank and illustrated how anxious consumers feel about financial institutions after a week in which one major bank failed and federal regulators stepped in to rescue mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Baltimore ABC News affiliate WMAR-TV aired the report about Eastern during its noon newscast.

WASHINGTON -- Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul D. Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled yesterday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank's next chief, but only if Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said. European officials have indicated they want to end the tradition of the U.S. picking the World Bank leader. But now the officials are hoping to enlist American help in persuading Wolfowitz to resign voluntarily, rather than be rebuked or ousted.

WASHINGTON -- Arriving as president of the World Bank in the summer of 2005, Paul D. Wolfowitz told colleagues that he was eager to tackle poverty in Africa and corruption in aid. But almost immediately he became consumed by frustrating negotiations with bank officials over the status of his companion, an employee at the bank, documents released this month show. Now these documents are at the center of the World Bank's inquiry into his conduct and Wolfowitz's defense, both of which will be presented at the World Bank's board of directors tomorrow.

WASHINGTON -- Paul D. Wolfowitz, while serving as deputy secretary of defense, personally recommended that Shaha Ali Riza, his female companion, be awarded a contract for travel to Iraq in 2003 to advise on setting up a new government, says a previously undisclosed inquiry by the Pentagon's inspector general. The inquiry, as described by a senior Pentagon official, concluded that there was no wrongdoing in Wolfowitz's role in the hiring of Riza by Science Applications International Corp.

WASHINGTON -- Paul D. Wolfowitz, seeking support for his beleaguered leadership as president of the World Bank, is turning for help to the one group at the bank that aides say he has focused on the most, the leaders of sub-Saharan Africa, bank officials say. At a news conference yesterday, as hundreds of delegates in Washington speculated about Wolfowitz's future, several finance ministers of African countries said he had done an outstanding job in...

Mercantile Bankshares Corp., the Baltimore banking company whose wealth management division has been rocked by dismissals and dueling lawsuits, said yesterday that it has hired a former Mercantile executive to head the unit. Jay M. Wilson, a founder and general partner of Spring Capital Partners LP, a private equity fund in Baltimore, has been named a vice chairman of the state's largest independently owned banking company. He will be responsible for the investment and wealth management division when he takes over in January and is expected to become a director of the company.

Baltimore County posted more bank robberies in the first eight months of this year than in all of last year, and police met with bank officials and other law enforcement agencies yesterday to discuss ways of halting the rapid rise. In January, Baltimore County police, Baltimore City police and the local office of the FBI formed a joint task force to investigate area bank robberies. The group has been successful in making arrests, said county police Chief Terrence B. Sheridan, but the number of bank robberies in the county continues to rise.

John J. Pileggi, one of two Mercantile Bankshares Corp. executives fired last March in an ethics flap, sued the bank for $240 million yesterday, claiming that his dismissal had deprived him of a potential payout in the event that Mercantile was sold. In his suit filed in Baltimore Circuit Court, Pileggi said that the bank's chief executive had held regular meetings with a senior officer of another Baltimore bank to explore a possible merger. He also alleged that representatives of two investment banking firms told Mercantile board members in January that the best way to enhance shareholder value was to sell the company.

The Allfirst name will disappear this weekend as the bank's new owner, M&T Bank Corp., puts its logo on 161 Maryland branches and 100 branches out of state. On Monday, Buffalo, N.Y.-based M&T will follow up with the launch of a $3.5 million marketing campaign, including a new slogan, that will run for six to eight weeks, the company said. "This is the culmination of a whole series of conversion activities that have gone on over the last nine months," said Atwood "Woody" Collins III, president and chief operating officer of M&T's mid-Atlantic division.

A few years ago, banks and automakers were flooding drivers with lease deals so good it almost didn't make sense to tie up money to purchase a car, especially when it could be earning fatter returns in stocks. Today, banks that got burned in the leasing game during the heyday are getting out of the business, and automakers are pushing zero- and low-rate financing deals instead of leases. The upshot: Even the savviest consumers are turning away from leasing. Sue Stevens, director of financial planning for Morningstar Inc., bought a Toyota Highlander in August with a home-equity line of credit.