Chairman

OfficeMax Inc. announced the resignation yesterday of its CEO - its third high-level departure this year - and sacked two more employees amid an internal investigation into billing and accounting problems that include falsified documents. The resignation of Christopher Milliken as chief executive, president and board member of OfficeMax coincided with the company's announcement that it overstated earnings last year by $4 million to $6 million by failing to record certain payments to vendors.

F. Duncan Cornell, a retired lawyer who had served on the Board of Child Care of the United Methodist Church for nearly 50 years and was also a longtime Maryland General Hospital board member, died Friday of pneumonia at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Lutherville resident had celebrated his 94th birthday last month. Frank Duncan Cornell, the son of a psychiatrist and a homemaker, was born in New York City and raised in Menands, N.Y., a suburb of Albany. Mr. Cornell, who was known as Duncan, was a 1934 graduate of the Milne School in Albany.

ROBERT J. Lawless, chief executive officer of McCormick & Co., can think of only one person who has the time, knowledge and experience to serve as chairman of the Hunt Valley spice maker's board of directors. Himself. "An outside chairman wouldn't know what's going on" day-to-day, said Lawless, who, like almost every top executive at Maryland's big corporations, holds the title of CEO and chairman. He isn't alone in his thinking. About 80 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index are headed by a combined chairman/CEO, according to the Corporate Library, an independent research firm based in Maine.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's board of directors has approved a plan to wipe out debt and provide fresh cash reserves for the next fiscal year by drawing upon nearly one-third - $27.5 million - of the organization's $90 million endowment. The unusual action will put the BSO back in the black after several years of operating at a deficit, a figure expected to exceed $16 million by the end of the current fiscal year. As part of the plan, $62 million will be transferred to a new trust fund managed by an independent board of trustees, a principal that cannot be touched.

Alfred E. Festa, president, chief executive officer and chairman of W.R. Grace & Co., will be staying on the job another four years under a new agreement reached with the Columbia-based company, according to a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under the pact, Festa's initial base salary will be $936,000. His targeted annual performance bonus will be equal to his salary and his long-term incentive compensation is expected to be $3.2 million over the next three years.

Some of America's top chief executive officers will be coming to Annapolis July 12-14 to take part in Forbes business magazine's first CEO Forum.The forum, to be held at Loews Annapolis Hotel, will provide "a rare opportunity for the nation's chief executives to meet their peers across industry lines and exchange ideas on key management, trade and policy issues facing corporate America," Jeffrey M. Cunningham, Forbes' publisher, said in a prepared statement.Among...

Thirteen new members have been appointed to Baltimore County's 25-member Economic Development Commission, leaving only the director's position vacant.County Executive Roger B. Hayden has been trying to rebuild the volunteer commission and its staff, which has been decimated by firings and turmoil during the last six months. The director, Kenneth C. Nohe, and the chairman, A. Samuel Cook, have both resigned.In July, Mr. Hayden named H. Grant Hathaway, chairman of the Maryland National Bank and vice chairman of MNC Financial Inc., to chair the commission.

H. Furlong Baldwin, who retired last month as chairman and director of Mercantile Bankshares Corp., was named chairman of the Nasdaq board of directors in a series of management changes the stock market announced yesterday. Robert Greifeld will be Nasdaq's president and chief executive officer and run much of the day-to-day operations. Baldwin and Greifeld, an executive of SunGard Data Systems in Wayne, Pa., will replace Hardwick Simmons, who has held the chairman and CEO posts since 2001.

Despite "a difficult year in many respects," Mercantile Bankshares Corp. was able to improve profitability in 2002 - for the 27th year in a row - and is "well-positioned" for 2003, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Edward J. "Ned" Kelly III told shareholders yesterday at the company's annual meeting. The addition of F&M Bancorp, Kelly said, represents "an enormous growth opportunity. In addition to the cost savings that I think we will be able to realize, if we don't grow that franchise and grow the bank as a whole and add to our own incremental growth rate by a point or two, then I think we will have failed in that regard."

It will be more than just business as usual in Annapolis next week, when Anne Arundel County welcomes the creme de la creme of America's business world to our state capital. Forbes, the bible of the business community, is having, what sounds like a fascinating three-day CEO forum.The event will begin Wednesday with a reception and dinner at the Naval Academy with host Jeffrey M. Cunningham, publisher of Forbes magazine, and Adm. Charles R. Larson, superintendent of the Naval Academy. The first of many panel discussions will begin after dinner and this one includes former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, now chairman of Forbes, as one of the panelists discussing "Global Military Challenges Facing the United States."