Institutional Investors

Rockville-based EntreMed Inc., which in April canceled plans to sell 2 million additional shares after investors fled biotechnology stocks, announced plans yesterday to complete a more modest, 1-million-share offering that would net the company about $20.6 million. EntreMed said the proceeds - enough to help carry it "well beyond" a year - would be used to test its experimental protein drugs designed to block the growth of tumor-feeding blood vessels as well as for day-to-day expenses and general corporate purposes.

Jeff Stone is courting an entirely new crowd of well-heeled customers these days. All sales should be this easy.Stone, the president of Tweeter Home Entertainment Group of Canton, Mass., knows all about pitching customers on high-end consumer electronics.Now Tweeter itself is a darling to institutional investors with huge sums to invest and a powerful appetite for retail stocks. Their interest has helped Tweeter stock to more than triple in five months. Mutual fund managers and other big investors began buying retail stocks in volume two years ago, starting with large, well-known names such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Dayton Hudson Corp.

The Ravens are scheduled tomorrow to finalize a complex financial restructuring in which the team will take on $185 million in debt and shift majority ownership -- but not control -- from Art Modell to his wife, Pat.NFL rules limit the amount of debt that a team owner can take on using the club as collateral. The rules, however, do not prohibit a minority investor from borrowing liberally against his or her holdings.So Modell, working to pay off debts from Cleveland, buy out two Ohio-based minority partners and pay the considerable bills from his move of the franchise to Baltimore last year, transferred ownership of 70 percent of the team to his wife of 28 years.

NEW YORK -- Financier Carl Icahn said yesterday that he had sold his 19.93 million shares of RJR Nabisco Holding Corp. for $732.4 million, all but ending his 17-month attempt to force the food and tobacco company to split in two.Icahn said investor "euphoria" over talks to settle legal claims against the tobacco industry dashed his second bid to win control of the maker of Camel cigarettes and Oreo cookies. He made about $134.5 million from the sale, not including dividends.It isn't Icahn's first abrupt exit.

NEW YORK -- Last month the nation's financial markets went off on a wild roller-coaster ride, leading many analysts to wonder if the Nineties bull market was coming to a grinding halt.Mutual funds and investors began to withdraw their holdings. Securities issued by underachieving high-tech companies were hit especially hard, and news that a package bomb was probably responsible for the crash TWA Flight 800 did nothing to reassure owners of jittery transportation stocks.So, is the market about to collapse?

THE SITUATION sounds familiar. Financial institutions with state charters have depositors' money insured by a private corporation. They fight efforts to switch to the "full faith and credit" protection of federal insurance. It's not needed, they say. Everything is fine just the way it is.That's what we heard in the 1980s from the state's savings and loan operators, who schemed and manipulated their way into a huge scandal that saw dozens of local thrifts declared insolvent, S&L officials and owners sent to prison, taxpayers forced to ante up $100 million and depositors deprived of their money for as long as four years.

Buoyed by declining vacancies and increased interest from institutional investors, several landlords are testing the waters in an effort to sell top-tier suburban office buildings.Most notably, Riparius Corp. is marketing five buildings in Owings Mills and Timonium for $48 million, according to an investment package obtained by The Sun."We think this is a good time to sell because suburban office projects seem to be the preferred asset class among institutional investors," said Michael McCarthy, president of Riparius.

The federal judge presiding over the former Marriott Corp. securities fraud case declared a mistrial yesterday after the jury was unable to reach a verdict during three days of deliberations.Judge Alexander Harvey II dismissed the 10-member panel after jurors deadlocked with eight jurors favoring a judgment for Marriott and two in favor of the plaintiffs, according to one juror. The jurors could not agree on how much information the company was required to disclose to investors and when that disclosure should have occurred, key points of argument in the three-week trial.

Attorneys representing Marriott International Inc. and bondholders presented final arguments yesterday in a federal case that alleges the hotel operator misled investors when it sold $400 million of debt.After closing statements, the case was sent to the jury. But Judge Alexander Harvey II allowed the panel to recess late yesterday afternoon after it failed to reach a decision. Deliberations are to resume today.Plaintiffs are seeking roughly $18 million in damages from Marriott International, Chief Executive J. W. Marriott and Richard Marriott, and former Chief Financial Officer Stephen F. Bollenbach.

NEW YORK -- Several members of a group of Philip Morris' largest shareholders walked out of a meeting with company board members yesterday, complaining that the company did not take seriously their concerns about splitting its tobacco and nontobacco operations."