Brokerage

E*Trade Financial Corp. Shares climbed $1.07 to close at $5.33. The struggling online brokerage is trying to negotiate a takeover or partial sale to a rival, according to media reports.

Proposed requirements increasing a real estate brokerage's supervision of its agents is raising concerns in the industry. The Maryland Real Estate Commission is expected to vote on the proposals Wednesday.Real estate agents are considered by law to be independent contractors and under minimal supervision of their brokerages.Agents work for themselves. They aren't paid unless they transact business. They don't get reimbursed for their expenses, and they don't receive health and other benefits or paid vacations.

James W. Brinkley couldn't look calmer. Dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, crisp white shirt and red silk tie, he gazes at the morning fog outside his office window on the 35th floor of the Legg Mason Inc. tower.Then he observes: There's a freight train barreling straight toward the brokerage industry, and at stake is global dominance. Will it be by U.S. brokerage houses and stock exchanges, or those run by the Japanese, Germans, British and French?"The real issue here is to increase our global market share," said Brinkley, president of Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc., the brokerage subsidiary of Legg Mason.

Less than a week after allegations surfaced that Coleman Craten LLC defrauded Charles Schwab & Co. and a Howard County couple of nearly $1.2 million, a Florida trading firm has stopped doing business with the Baltimore firm.Corporate Securities Group had executed securities trades for the downtown firm since it opened last year -- a typical arrangement for start-up brokerages like Coleman Craten, said Joel E. Marks, vice chairman of the Boca Raton, Fla.-based firm.But Marks said yesterday that reports of two lawsuits containing the allegations in The Sun last week "raised red flags around here."

Baltimore was a vibrant city when George Mackubin struck out on his own. Although he was only a spindly 25-year-old, he was brash and supremely confident.Having served two stints in brokerage houses, Mackubin knew there was money to be made, and he wanted his share.One hundred years ago, Mackubin opened a brokerage firm in downtown Baltimore, a one-man firm, tucked away in a room in the old Baltimore Stock Exchange Building on German Street (now Redwood Street). If only he could see his company now.Although it has undergone several name changes, Mackubin's modest creation has evolved into Legg Mason Inc.The company has flourished despite the great Baltimore fire of 1904, two world wars, the crash of 1929, the Great Depression and the wave of mergers in the 1990s.

SIXTY-SIX-year-old Harold N. Peremel has joined the revolution, and he's loving it.Peremel, president of Peremel & Co., is helping transform the Baltimore-based brokerage he started in 1974 to take advantage of the technology revolution sweeping Wall Street.Two years after the company began offering online trading in 1997, it has introduced a palm-size beeper that lets customers buy and sell stocks, trade options and keep tabs on the market. It also stores messages and fax notes, and holds hundreds of addresses and phone numbers.

More than 60 police officers were called to restore order early yesterday at the downtown Brokerage after a crowd of thousands gathered for an entertainment event became unruly.Officers wielding bullhorns and batons were called from across the city when the crowd stampeded after a gunshot about 1 a.m., police said."We used everything and every available person we had to move them," said Central District Lt. John Bailey. "Public safety was in jeopardy."Sgt. K. J. Ellinger described the scene as a "near-riot situation."

Last year, the best-performing sector of the robust stock market was the financial service industry -- a curiously symmetrical outcome that should give ordinary investors pause.Wall Street has been enriched vastly by the boom it has created in portfolio-style investing, notably in mutual funds, as investors subsidize the bull market merry-go-round with few questions asked about the fees being paid.The dramatic expansion of employer-sponsored retirement programs, in which employees are responsible for their investment results but are far removed from the process, makes it even less likely that investors will follow the money being paid in fees to Wall Street to see how it's being spent.

The city's economic development agency, in an effort to breathe life into another failed downtown tourist attraction, yesterday chose the Cordish Co. -- the successful redeveloper of the Power Plant -- to revitalize the Brokerage complex at 34 Market Place.The city's announcement comes roughly a month before it will debut the nation's second-largest children's museum in the former Fishmarket adjacent to the Brokerage.In selecting Cordish, the city underlined the importance of the $32 million Port Discovery museum -- considered a linchpin for redevelopment of the downtown's east side -- and the need for complimentary uses to support it."

Sandy Weill has reached the top of the mountain. But it wasn't long ago that the 65-year-old chairman and chief executive of Travelers Group Inc. was standing at the bottom, looking up.He was out of work for 13 months after resigning as president of American Express Co. in 1985. Then, in 1986, he failed in an attempt to take control of ailing BankAmerica Corp."It was difficult not having a job," Weill recalled last week. "I was always brought up to go to work."But a Baltimore company called Commercial Credit Corp.

Morgan Stanley is in advanced talks with Citigroup Inc. to form a joint venture that would combine the brokerage units of both banks and give Morgan Stanley a 51 percent stake, according to a person familiar with the matter. An agreement could be announced as soon as this weekend, said the person, who declined to be identified because the deal is not complete. Morgan Stanley would pay cash for control of the venture and would have an option to increase its ownership to as much as 100 percent in coming years, the source said.

Human lifespan being what it is, founders of great corporations rarely see their creations at their height. Thomas Rowe Price Jr., founder of the eponymous Baltimore financial-management company, is long gone. Black & Decker co-founder S. Duncan Black missed most of his company's overseas growth and its development into a billion-dollar powerhouse. Willoughby McCormick did not live to see McCormick & Co.'s ascendance as a coast-to-coast spice vendor. Raymond A. "Chip" Mason produced a global giant in one generation.

CLEVELAND -- David A. Dadante says he didn't set out to steal anybody's money, much less tarnish Ferris, Baker Watts Inc. - one of Baltimore's oldest and most respected brokerages. He launched an investment fund, hoping to make himself and others rich by steering their money into risky stocks and initial public offerings. But to sell the plan, the former casino host admits he told about 100 wealthy individuals an elaborate lie backed up by phony account statements crafted on his home computer.

Ferris, Baker Watts Inc., one of a vanishing breed of small independent brokerages in an industry dominated by Wall Street giants, has agreed to sell itself to Canada's largest bank, which will fold the firm into its Minneapolis-based money manager RBC Dain Rauscher Inc. The deal with Royal Bank of Canada marks the end of local ownership for a firm that has survived two world wars, the Great Depression and countless boom-and-bust cycles while building a...

Baltimore brokerage Ferris Baker Watts Inc. has offered a settlement worth more than $16 million to victims of an investment fraud that was aided by a former broker at the firm, according to court documents filed this week. The proposed settlement, which is subject to conditions, would resolve disputes with about 100 victims of the fraud, which grew out of a Ponzi scheme initiated by a former Ferris client, David A. Dadante. It would also put the century-old regional brokerage a step closer to resolving a series of lengthy federal and internal investigations that have cost several senior managers their jobs and brought unwanted scrutiny at a time when its chairman, George M. Ferris Jr., is courting potential acquirers.

In January 2003, Stephen J. Glantz left the Advest brokerage in Ohio and went to work for Ferris Baker Watts, bringing with him a solid book of business and a big client named David A. Dadante. For the century-old Baltimore brokerage, it was the start of a legal and financial debacle that will linger long after Glantz and Dadante are sentenced this week for their roles in a stock-manipulation scheme involving Ferris' trading desk. The firm faces a continuing federal investigation and several civil lawsuits that could take years to untangle.

E*Trade Financial Corp. Shares climbed $1.07 to close at $5.33. The struggling online brokerage is trying to negotiate a takeover or partial sale to a rival, according to media reports.

Louis Akers Jr., vice chairman and former chief executive of Ferris, Baker Watts Inc., has taken early retirement from the Baltimore brokerage, making him the highest-ranking executive to leave since federal investigators began probing the company's trades on behalf of a former customer accused of fraud. A Ferris spokeswoman said Akers' retirement began Friday, ending a nearly 18-year career with one of the nation's largest remaining regional brokerage houses. Nearly four months ago, Akers, 55, joined five other top executives and traders in taking temporary leave from the company.

One of the first things entrepreneurs are taught is that if their businesses are not growing, they are falling behind. The second thing is that growth must be carefully managed. These are more than adages. They are closer to biblical commandments, because the corporate graveyard is filled with skeletons of firms that failed to heed the advice. Few companies have executed both strategies with greater focus or efficiency than Manekin LLC, the Columbia-based real estate conglomerate. It is neither the company it was nor is it the company it will be. Still, its top custodians are almost fanatical about not permitting Manekin to become something it is not. "They understand their niche in the overall real estate development community, and they work their market very well," says Richard W. Story, chief executive officer of the Howard County Department of Economic Development.

MARYLAND Churches flout donations ban More than 100 churches in Maryland - including dozens in Baltimore - have made campaign contributions to political candidates in recent years, an act that is prohibited by federal tax law and blurs the line between politics and the pulpit, according to a Sun review of candidate finance reports. pg 1a Budget alarms AIDS workers Baltimore's health commissioner and advocates for people with HIV and AIDS are concerned that shuffling of budget money at the state AIDS Administration could hurt the city's efforts to stop the spread of the virus and force people who depend on life-sustaining drugs to do without them.