Investment Management

The recovery from the current recession could be prolonged because of the large amount of debt in the economy, the scarcity of credit and fewer families buying homes, according to J. Dorsey Brown, chief executive officer of Alex. Brown Investment Management.Brown's view of the economy and investment opportunities was one of three perspectives presented yesterday to the Baltimore Security Analysts Society."The heydays of the 1980s are over," Brown said, noting that the news in the first six months of 1991 will be "truly bad."

T. Rowe Price lost another one of its fund managers, the third this year. Friday was the last day for Joseph M. Milano, 40, who has been the manager of Price's New America Growth Fund since 2002, said spokesman Brian Lewbart. Milano, who joined the Baltimore-based money manager in 1996 as an associate analyst, only recently informed Price of his plans to leave. "He let us know he was leaving the firm to pursue other investment management opportunities, most likely on his own," Lewbart said.

Legg Mason Inc. and Citigroup Inc. appear to be in the final stages of negotiations over swapping divisions that would be carved from both financial companies, Wall Street analysts and industry experts said. The companies have reportedly been in talks for several weeks, although tight-lipped officials with Legg Mason and Citigroup have declined to comment publicly. The situation has left employees, clients and shareholders on tenterhooks. Some observers say they are confident a deal is near fruition.

Legg Mason Inc. is looking to sublease 78,000 square feet on three floors at its headquarters in Harbor East. The Baltimore-based investment management firm is consolidating its space, partly due to the recently announced merger of Legg Mason Capital Management into a larger Legg affiliate, ClearBridge Investments in New York, said spokeswoman Mary Athridge. Legg leases 372,000 square feet in the building. Since 2009, Legg has subleased 82,000 square feet of that to Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and McGladrey, a tax consultant, Athridge said.

Twenty-one years ago, Jennifer W. Lambdin stood awe-struc amid a crush of boisterous traders on the New York Stock Exchange.She was just out of college and a junior portfolio manager at First National Bank of Maryland, and had traveled to Wall Street to see how the world's most important stock exchange functioned.She was assigned to shadow a sharply dressed "specialist," who filled orders for brokers who want to buy a stock. Minutes before the market opened he turned to a colleague and said: "Give me the Maalox."

T. Rowe Price lost another one of its fund managers, the third this year. Friday was the last day for Joseph M. Milano, 40, who has been the manager of Price's New America Growth Fund since 2002, said spokesman Brian Lewbart. Milano, who joined the Baltimore-based money manager in 1996 as an associate analyst, only recently informed Price of his plans to leave. "He let us know he was leaving the firm to pursue other investment management opportunities, most likely on his own," Lewbart said.

Legg Mason Inc. said yesterday that it has agreed to acquire a Pennsylvania investment management company that specializes in serving banks.Fairfield Group Inc., based in Horsham, Pa., would become an independent subsidiary of the Baltimore-based company under the agreement. The financial details of the deal were not released.Fairfield manages two money market mutual funds with total assets of $600 million. It also invests about $1.3 billion in money market instruments for banks and their trust departments.

NEW YORK -- Ending a costly attempt to diversify outside of insurance, USF&G Corp. reached a definite agreement yesterday for the sale of New York-based Chancellor Capital Management Inc., a large investment management group acquired in 1988 from Citicorp for $102.5 million.The sale is to Chancellor's employees. Although details of the transaction remain confidential, analysts said it appears that much of the purchase will be financed by USF&G. USF&G will retain 49 percent of Chancellor initially but, based on statements by the company, will gradually reduce its stake.

Legg Mason Inc. is looking to sublease 78,000 square feet on three floors at its headquarters in Harbor East. The Baltimore-based investment management firm is consolidating its space, partly due to the recently announced merger of Legg Mason Capital Management into a larger Legg affiliate, ClearBridge Investments in New York, said spokeswoman Mary Athridge. Legg leases 372,000 square feet in the building. Since 2009, Legg has subleased 82,000 square feet of that to Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and McGladrey, a tax consultant, Athridge said.

Alex. Brown Inc. announced yesterday that it has taken a small equity interest in a new investment management firm created by Richard C. Hackney Jr., who is leaving Alex. Brown to establish Hackney Capital Management L.P.Mr. Hackney, who was president of Alex. Brown's Flag Investors Emerging Growth Fund, is majority owner of his new firm.Five years ago, Baltimore-based Alex. Brown helped broker Nathan A. Chapman Jr. leave the firm and set up his own, now a successful minority-owned brokerage with offices in about a half-dozen cities.

State legislators often prioritize important legislation the way kindergartners rank vegetables among the food groups. They focus on media-friendly social legislation instead of structural reform requiring time and effort to understand and craft. Why, for example, did they pass gay marriage and a law regulating how long a child must face rearward in a car seat but not figure out the budget until the absolute last minute? And why didn't they spend time this year on how to pay the pensions of the 373,000 people in the state retirement system?

T. Rowe Price Group is expanding its Australian business by adding investment management and research professionals at its Sydney office. The move continues the Baltimore money manager's push to increase its global footprint. In January, the company closed a deal to buy 26 percent of India's oldest mutual fund firm. Price has hired Australian portfolio manager Randal Jenneke to build its equity team there, and the firm expects to hire four analysts over the next year, said Bill Stromberg, Price's director of global equity.

Legg Mason Inc. will introduce tomorrow a re-branding of its namesake mutual funds meant to improve their marketability and visibility as the Baltimore money manager rebounds from its poor performance amid last year's financial sector meltdown. Most Legg Mason and Legg Mason Partners retail and institutional funds will be known under a common naming convention: The Legg Mason brand followed by the name of the investment manager and fund strategy. For example, the company's most well-known product - the Legg Mason Value Trust - will be renamed Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust to reflect the fund manager, Legg Mason Capital Management, based in Baltimore.

Two days after Barclays, the British bank, failed to reach a deal that would have salvaged Lehman Brothers, it moved closer to its prize yesterday, striking a tentative agreement to buy the broken investment firm's core capital markets businesses for about $2 billion - far less than Lehman had hoped for. The accord, announced to Lehman employees yesterday afternoon, could save 8,000 to 10,000 Lehman jobs and allow Robert E. Diamond Jr., the president of...

Robert J.M. Wilson, former president of Adams Express Co. and of Petroleum & Resources Corp., who as a youth participated in the historic Fahnestock Expedition to the South Pacific, died of pneumonia Wednesday at the Charlestown Retirement Community. He was 88. Mr. Wilson was born in Millbrook, N.Y., and was raised in Greenwich, Conn., and Rumson, N.J. He was a 1938 graduate of the Choate School and earned a bachelor's degree in sociology at Yale University in 1942. "Instead of attending his freshman year at Yale, he joined a yearlong expedition to the South Seas on the Fahnestock Expedition," said his daughter, Olivia Wilson Welbourn of Owings Mills.

The mutual fund industry is buzzing with news that two of its bigger players - Putnam Investments and MFS Investment Management - are up for sale. Both firms are old-line, big-name management companies that sell their wares through financial advisers. Both have suffered in recent years from a company-choking mix of mediocre-at-best performance and bad headlines, having been on the wrong side of the fund industry scandals of 2003. Looking forward to when their respective parents find suitable deals, both companies can be an example for fund shareholders of how to react when your manager goes through a merger, whether it is the firm buying new assets or the one giving up the chase.

NationsBank Corp., in an effort to boost its international investment offerings, announced a joint venture yesterday with a British money manager, Gartmore Capital Management.NationsBank and Gartmore, a subsidiary of Gartmore PLC of London, have created a 50-50 joint venture called Nations Gartmore Investment Management, which will provide international investment services to customers in America, the two companies said in a news conference yesterday."We've long been a provider of investment and trust services in the U.S.," said Charles Smith, chief investment officer for NationsBank.

Stocks open on upward noteThe stock market turned upward today with encouragement from declining interest rates.The Dow Jones average of 30 industrials rose 13.78 points to 3,292.47 in the first half-hour of trading. Gainers outpaced losers by about 5 to 3 in nationwide trading of New York Stock Exchange-listed issues, with 739 up, 422 down and 626 unchanged. Volume on the Big Board came to 26.08 million shares as of 10 a.m. on Wall Street.Interest rates dropped in the bond market today, relieving worries over a recent upswing that lifted yields on long-term Treasury bonds.

Retirement money used to be the definition of long-term investing, with pension managers encouraged to think of their portfolios with time horizons even longer than a single lifetime in order to maximize investment results for the plan over time. Amid the current U.S. pension-law overhaul and a rush to shorter-term fixed income strategies in other workplace savings plans, those horizons are looking shorter. Many pension managers are alternatively turning to the safety of bonds at the same time they are expected to dabble more frequently in riskier investments to try to juice returns.

T. Rowe Price Group Inc., the Baltimore-based investment management firm, announced yesterday a 2-for-1 stock split that would make more shares available on the market for investors and double the number of shares in company coffers that could be used to make acquisitions. Under the plan approved by Price's board of directors, stockholders will be paid on June 23 one additional share for each share owned as of June 19. The board also declared a quarterly dividend of 14 cents per share, or half the regular dividend, that will be paid July 11. Price shares rose 13 cents, or less than 1 percent, to $77.47 yesterday on the Nasdaq stock market.