Executives

When identity thieves stole sensitive information about thousands of consumers from Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint Inc. in February 2005, it caused a national uproar. Furious consumer advocates demanded changes in the way Social Security numbers, credit card information, and addresses are collected and kept by companies, government agencies and others. Lawmakers responded by proposing a flurry of new legislation. Nearly two years later, though, the number and the cost of data breaches is still growing.

Educate Inc. executives hope the tutoring company's new life as a privately held business will enable it to move beyond its financial struggles after shareholders approved yesterday management-led buyout of the Baltimore-based operation. Company executives announced that 75 percent of Educate shareholders approved the $535 million deal. Shareholders will receive $8 a share from the management-led investment group, including Chief Executive Officer R. Christopher Hoehn-Saric and others.

When Bank of America Corp. announced its $35 billion acquisition of MBNA Corp. in summer 2005, many people questioned whether it would work. MBNA, a stand-alone credit-card giant that started in Baltimore as part of MNC Financial Inc., took pride in its fast-paced and entrepreneurial spirit, its freewheeling spending and a secretive corporate culture. Executives roamed its opulent headquarters in Wilmington, Del., where the phrase, "Think of yourself as a customer," was spelled out in small gold capital letters on both sides of at least 1,700 doorways.

DETROIT -- A new Ford Motor Co. evaluation policy could leave some of its top 20,000 executives in a sort of cold sweat they haven't experienced since college.Ford is instituting a global performance-review system for next year that's similar to the college practice of grading on the curve: Ten percent of the executives will get A's, 80 percent will get B's and 10 percent will get C's.Those getting C's will see their raises, bonuses and stock options go to the folks who get the A's and B's. And if someone gets a C two years in a row, he or she may be demoted or fired, according to an internal company memo.

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission will issue legal guidance within a month that directs executives to postpone trading stock until their companies disclose potential market-moving information, officials said yesterday.The guidance on "materiality," aimed at curbing possible inside trading and increasing corporate disclosure, seeks to clear up confusion about what information is so significant that it needs to be disclosed, said SEC chief accountant Lynn Turner.The way some U.S. businesses interpret securities rules on disclosure of "material" information, companies must announce only developments that could increase or decrease their profit between 3 percent and 10 percent.

America's chief executive officers aren't the only ones who have received big raises thanks to the booming economy -- some top county officials in the Baltimore area have seen their salaries jump, too.For many officials, salaries have increased at more than twice the 4 percent average annual increase to lower-level executives in private industry.Howard County Public Works Director James M. Irvin earns $117,416, a $23,000 increase over the past four years. Robert Barrett, a special assistant to Baltimore County's executive, earns $110,000, almost double the $58,000 he earned when hired in 1994.

MedImmune Inc., the fast-growing Maryland biotechnology company, said yesterday that it has completed its purchase of U.S. Bioscience Inc. in a bid to move into the growing market for new cancer treatments.Shareholders of U.S. Bioscience, based in West Conshohocken, Pa., received 0.15 shares of Gaithersburg-based MedImmune for each U.S. Bioscience share they held.MedImmune, whose chief product is a drug to prevent a serious respiratory illness in infants, said the stock transaction had an equity value of $580 million.

W. R. Grace & Co.'s decision to relocate its worldwide headquarters in Columbia will raise the Baltimore region's visibility as a good place to live and work, industry observers and local officials say.There's also the benefit of having a firm whose chief executive officer wants to bulk up Grace's worldwide presence, they say."This company is in the process of changing its stripes," said Bear, Stearns & Co. analyst Christopher Bodnar. "It had been in a restructuring mode. Now, it's moving forward as an organization into a growth-focused, acquisition mode.

A CHANGING OF the guard occurs today in Maryland's suburbs. The county executives and commissioners elected a month ago will be inaugurated. They replace people who gained the job -- one of the most demanding in local government -- as population boom and economic strife collided in the early 1990s.County executives John G. Gary in Anne Arundel, Charles I. Ecker in Howard and Eileen M. Rehrmann in Harford and Carroll commissioners W. Benjamin Brown and Richard T. Yates leave office for different reasons.

Political and business leaders from Baltimore and Washington formally, but with much optimism, launched a joint effort yesterday intended to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to this region.If by 2002 the effort beats out eight other U.S. cities for this country's nomination and then international competitors, which won't be known until 2005, the rewards could be huge.At stake are world renown, as well as thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in private and public investment.Knowing that, business executives from both metro areas already have committed to spending $6 million on the bid, knowing that expense could double.

SEC files complaint against former Integral executives The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint Thursday against three former executives of Columbia-based Integral Systems Inc., claiming the trio for years had concealed the criminal securities fraud conviction of one of the executives from shareholders. Regulators claim that former chief executive Steven R. Chamberlain and former executive Elaine M. Brown concealed from 1998 to 2006 that Gary A. Prince had been convicted in 1995 of securities fraud at another company.

Ongoing battles between state officials and Constellation Energy Group escalated again Thursday when Maryland regulators ordered a review of the company's deal with a French utility and Constellation quickly countered with a lawsuit. The Public Service Commission, the state's top energy regulator, determined that Constellation's $4.5 billion deal to sell half its nuclear power assets to Electricite de France must be in the public's interest. The order adds a regulatory hurdle to completing the transaction, which the company had hoped to do by October.

With St. Joseph Medical Center under federal investigation, three top executives resigned Friday from the Towson hospital, including its longtime president and CEO, and its chief operating officer. The executives - CEO John K. Tolmie, COO Sly C. Moore, and Lucy Shamash, vice president of operations - have been on leave since February, when the hospital disclosed it was being investigated for its financial dealings with a physician group. At the time, the hospital said the executives were taking time off to avoid a conflict of interest amid the investigation.

WASHINGTON - Time Warner Inc. announced Wednesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to spin off its ailing AOL division. "Although the Company's Board of Directors has not made any decision," the company wrote in its latest quarterly report to investors, "the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner's stockholders, in one or a series of transactions." Time Warner's net income dropped 14 percent over the same period a year ago, mainly because of dropping revenues at AOL but also because of a suffering publishing business.

Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group said yesterday that it no longer will guarantee up to $32 million in performance and retention payouts for executives after facing sharp public criticism over the incentives. The reversal comes two days after the awards were revealed by Th e Baltimore Sun. The disclosure sparked anger from consumers concerned about higher energy bills. And state lawmakers criticized the payouts, which became public during a national backlash involving bonuses to executives at insurance giant American International Group.

Mutual-fund executives have proposed rule changes to make money-market funds safer while heading off tougher regulations proposed by advisers to the Obama administration. The proposals include plans to introduce liquidity requirements, shorten maturity limits and require more disclosure of fund holdings, according to the summary of a report to be released today by Investment Company Institute. The board of the Washington-based trade association approved the plan yesterday. A committee headed by Vanguard Group Chairman John J. Brennan had studied money funds for more than a year, when the $62.5 billion Reserve Primary Fund collapsed in September, setting off an industrywide run by investors.

Three executives at St. Joseph Medical Center are on administrative leave to avoid a conflict of interest as federal authorities look into financial dealings between the Towson hospital and an affiliated doctors' group, the hospital said yesterday. The hospital provided little information last night about what led the three executives to step down. According to a statement released by the hospital, the federal Department of Health and Human Services contacted the hospital in June 2008 to request information "pertaining to a physician group and its financial relationship with the hospital."

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama sharply crticized Wall Street executives yesterday, calling it the "height of irresponsibility" that they gave themselves and employees huge bonuses last year even as the government was paying out billions to bail out ailing financial firms. Obama's stern lecture was inspired by a new report finding the executives gave out $18.4 billion in bonuses in 2008 - a big drop from the previous year but outrageous to the president just the same. Seated in the Oval Office after a meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Obama said this is not the right time for executives to be raking in huge bonuses.

NEW YORK - With the sharp stock market decline for Citigroup rapidly becoming a full-blown crisis of confidence, the company's executives entered into talks with federal officials yesterday about how to stabilize the struggling financial giant. In tense meetings and telephone calls, the executives and officials weighed several options, including whether to replace Citigroup Inc.'s leadership or sell all or part of the company. Other options discussed included having the government try to steady Citigroup with a public endorsement or a new financial lifeline, people involved in the talks said.

Maryland's top energy regulator vowed a thorough review of the sale of Constellation Energy Group as state lawmakers grilled the company's executives about its management and the terms of a deal it struck to avoid a possible bankruptcy. Douglas Nazarian, chairman of the Public Service Commission, outlined issues that his agency plans to address when reviewing the proposed $4.7 billion purchase of Baltimore's last Fortune 500 company by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. The PSC must approve the deal and can impose conditions to ensure that it is in the public interest.