Equity

CHICAGO -- Unable to reach a verdict Friday, Tribune Co.'s independent directors planned to resume deliberations yesterday on whether to accept Chicago billionaire Sam Zell's $33-per-share proposal for the media company or a rival 11th-hour offer from Los Angeles billionaires Eli Broad and Ron Burkle worth $34 a share, sources said. A meeting of the full Tribune board is scheduled for today, when a final decision could be voted on. Tribune owns The Sun, as well as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Restoration Hardware Inc. Shares advanced $3.76 to $6.44 after private equity firm Catterton Partners offered $267 million, or $6.70 a share in cash, for the California-based home furnishings retailer.

Sears Holdings Shares declined $2.35 to $111.85. The Kmart and Sears parent bought an almost 14 percent stake of Restoration Hardware Inc. - which has already agreed to be sold to private equity firm Catterton Partners.

Queen Elizabeth II once famously referred to her annus horribilis -- a horrible year during which almost everything went badly, from royal family scandals to a raging fire that destroyed parts of Windsor Castle. The American housing market experienced its own form of annus horribilis in 2007 -- a year when all the sins and excesses of the previous six years were visited upon nearly everyone in the system: Homeowners lost $160 billion in net equity in their homes from just the first quarter of 2007 through the third, according to the latest "flow of funds" data from the Federal Reserve.

Environmental Elements Corp. said yesterday that it will begin trading on the American Stock Exchange instead of the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 1, and that it expects to post a loss for the second quarter of its fiscal year.The Baltimore-based pollution control company is making the market switch because it does not expect to meet a new NYSE criterion that requires member companies to have market capitalization and shareholder equity of at least $50 million within one year."It's the equity component, not the market cap component, that causes the problem," said E. H. Verdery, chairman and chief executive officer.

IF ONE OF the largest banks in the country has its way, you as a homeowner won't have credit-card balances at high interest rates to worry about in the coming decade.That's because your house will function as your ultimate piece of plastic. In the words of Wells Fargo & Co. Senior Vice President Colin Walsh, "home equity will become the credit card" of the future, thanks to a new wave of high-tech "credit balance transfer" programs heading your way.With virtually no fanfare, Wells Fargo has begun contacting its $14 billion home equity loan customer base and offering homeowners the opportunity to convert electronically all of their outstanding credit-card balances to their equity account -- up to 100 percent of the market value of their homes.

A top BT Alex. Brown executive who heads the equity sales and trading division has resigned, sources familiar with the situation said, making him the seventh senior member of the firm to leave after the merger with Bankers Trust Corp. 18 months ago.It is unclear when Bruce H. Brandaleone will leave the Baltimore-based company, but colleagues held a send-off party for him yesterday.Clinton R. Daly, a managing director with the firm, will assume part of Brandaleone's responsibilities, and take over as head of U.S. institutional equity sales, sources familiar with the situation said.

The model is familiar: A cash-starved but promising start-up, unable to afford the talent it needs, entices employees and outside contractors with shares of stock. When the company goes public, the shares soar, making them wealthy overnight.The new twist on the East Coast is that more and more of those reaping the riches of initial public offerings are lawyers, who have traditionally maintained an arms-length relationship with clients.For more than a decade, the practice of lawyers taking equity in client companies has been a staple of Silicon Valley's fast-growing high technology economy.

First Mariner Bancorp reported yesterday that profit rose 38.7 percent in the third quarter, driven by increases in loans and revenue from service fees.The parent of First Mariner Bank made $250,968 in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, or 7 cents per diluted share, compared with $180,991, or 4 cents per share, for the corresponding period a year earlier.First Mariner's profit rose 42.8 percent to $694,124, or 20 cents per diluted share in the first nine months of the year, compared with profit of $486,233, or 14 cents per diluted share in the 1998 period.

MARK MAUER, associate director of the Sentencing Project, is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal with a dyed-in-the-wool liberal approach to crime. Take, for example, how he thinks judges should handle a drug offender who disdains treatment after being sentenced to it instead of jail time."

Improbable as it sounds at a time when American homeowners have lost billions in equity holdings, a new industry is taking shape to help them tap portions of their equity wealth without incurring traditional mortgage debt or making interest payments. Three companies with sophisticated capital market backers - REX & Co., Equity Key and Grander Financial - are offering cash to owners who agree to cut them into some of the future appreciation growth of their properties. The cash typically represents a fraction of the current market value of the home, and rises with the percentage of future appreciation the owner is willing to share.

Now starting its seventh season, Bay Theatre is known for professional excellence, innovatively produced within the confines of its 20-foot-wide stage. Its fame has grown, as I discovered in June at the annual conference of the American Theatre Critics Association in Washington, where a few of the 90 critics assembled had heard good things about the Annapolis-based company. Last season the nonprofit professional Bay Theatre Company became an Equity theater, a status that requires half of the actors in each production to be members of the Actors' Equity Association union.

Municipal Mortgage & Equity LLC, the real estate and alternative energy project financier, said yesterday that it is selling certain financial assets and curtailing parts of its business to conserve cash as it deals with the ripple effects of the souring credit market. The company said in a regulatory filing that lenders and investors who take positions in the funds it manages are pulling back from the business as they deal with credit problems. As a result of that and other difficulties, the Baltimore-based company, best known as MuniMae, is launching fewer funds, doing fewer deals and conserving cash until the situation stabilizes.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Federal prosecutors in Sacramento announced yesterday that 19 people have been indicted in a large mortgage fraud case that preyed on people close to foreclosure and stripped homeowners in two dozen states of millions of dollars in equity. McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, unsealed the contents of two indictments that detail a conspiracy to strip 115 people of $12.6 million in equity and their homes in cases that stretch from California to New York.

Queen Elizabeth II once famously referred to her annus horribilis -- a horrible year during which almost everything went badly, from royal family scandals to a raging fire that destroyed parts of Windsor Castle. The American housing market experienced its own form of annus horribilis in 2007 -- a year when all the sins and excesses of the previous six years were visited upon nearly everyone in the system: Homeowners lost $160 billion in net equity in their homes from just the first quarter of 2007 through the third, according to the latest "flow of funds" data from the Federal Reserve.

Sears Holdings Shares declined $2.35 to $111.85. The Kmart and Sears parent bought an almost 14 percent stake of Restoration Hardware Inc. - which has already agreed to be sold to private equity firm Catterton Partners.

With the daily din of bad news about the state of the housing market, it's easy to lose sight of some larger economic realities: Despite declining prices in many markets, homeowners still control near-record equity holdings, just under $11 trillion. In its latest quarterly "flow of funds" statistical report, the Federal Reserve calculated that American homeowners' equity accounts totaled $10.9 trillion by mid-2007. That was the net difference between total home mortgage debt ($10.1 trillion)

Restoration Hardware Inc. Shares advanced $3.76 to $6.44 after private equity firm Catterton Partners offered $267 million, or $6.70 a share in cash, for the California-based home furnishings retailer.

A class action lawsuit seeking to recover millions of dollars in home equity allegedly bilked from hundreds of distressed homeowners in Maryland, Virginia and Washington was shifted to federal court yesterday, broadening its scope to multiple jurisdictions. The 76-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, targets Metropolitan Money Store Corp. of Lanham and other defendants and supplants a similar lawsuit filed in Prince George's County Circuit Court last month. Lawyers who prepared both suits yesterday asked that the state suit be dismissed.

How are baby boomers who are still carrying hefty first and second mortgages going to pay them off? Millions of homeowners refinanced during the "refi boom" years of 2003-2004 and took out new loans with 15-year or 30-year terms. Some boomers now in their late 50s and early 60s have big mortgages with terms running for another quarter-century. When monthly payments on those mortgages begin to weigh heavily, will boomers need to sell their houses to relieve the debt pressure? The largest banks and mortgage companies in the country are readying new financial products designed to make the answer to that question a resounding no. Tops on the list: Proprietary reverse mortgages that allow owners to pay off their existing home loans, pull out additional equity dollars for other expenses, establish credit lines or even buy second homes - all without producing monthly payment obligations.