Investors

A federal judge has frozen the assets of a Baltimore man who is accused of bilking investors of $630,000 in an illegal commodities-trading venture and using part of the money to pay his mortgage and his daughter's college expenses. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett acted Thursday in the case of Andrew Silberstein, who is facing civil charges filed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Maryland securities commissioner. The civil complaint, filed March 5, charges Silberstein with nine counts of violations of the federal law regulating commodities, and violations of Maryland securities laws.

David Waldemar Gjerde, a retired Procter & Gamble executive who became a restaurant investor and consultant to his sons, Spike and Charlie, died of a heart attack May 2 at his Cockeysville home. He was 75. Born in Mankato, Minn., he was the son of Waldemar Gjerde, an engineer, and the former Ferne Sorenson, a church organist. Raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa, he earned an engineering degree from the University of Iowa. He served in the Army National Guard. He joined Procter & Gamble in Iowa and moved to Maryland in 1968 with his wife, the former Alice Silletto, and their two sons.

As many as 60,000 people may miss out on millions of dollars in settlement payments from Prudential Securities Inc., merely because they didn't ask for the money.They are among the thousands of investors, including almost 6,000 in Maryland, who sank more than $8 billion into risky limited partnerships that Prudential, the nation's fourth-largest brokerage firm, fraudulently sold to investors in the 1980s.Those investments have resulted in the largest securities fraud settlement in history, surpassing the $650 million that junk bond seller Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. paid to settle charges of securities and mail fraud.

Pixelligent Technologies, a maker of miniscule crystal additives used in electronics and plastics products, said Friday it has raised more than $5.1 million in new funding from the Abell Foundation and others. The funding will allow the Baltimore company to increase manufacturing capacity and hire application, engineering and business development employees, Pixelligent said. The company, which got its start in a College Park incubator, now has more than 30 commercial customers and hopes to open additional plants in Baltimore, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

With its share price up nearly 70 percent over the past two years and its annual profit hitting an all-time high, McCormick & Co. Inc. said yesterday that it will split its stock for the first time in a decade. The 2-for-1 split will go into effect April 8 for shares held at the close of business on March 25. The announcement was made after the markets closed. "This demonstrates management's confidence in the company's prospects and outlook for the future," said Robert J. Lawless, chairman, president and chief executive of the Sparks-based spice giant.

Following yesterday's Federal Reserve decision not to raise short-term interest rates, many people may wonder: Where should I put my money now -- stocks, bonds, CDs, money market funds? Several ideas:NOVEL STRATEGY: "Ever hear of 'Dogs of the Dow'? You buy the 10 highest-yielding Dow Jones industrial stocks," says James O'Shaughnessy, author of "What Works on Wall Street."He adds, "If you followed this strategy over the past 10 years, you beat the performance of 99 percent of mutual funds.

An Annapolis investment company headed by Joshua Fry, host of a Washington-area radio program that provides financial advice, was accused in a civil lawsuit yesterday of misappropriating a "substantial" amount of its clients' money.Stock and Options Services Inc., which has about 170 clients and manages about $6 million, has misused the funds since November 1991, according to the lawsuit, filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.Substantial amounts intended for the purchase of securities were instead diverted to Mr. Fry; his wife, Nancy Booth; and his son, Joshua Fry Jr., the lawsuit said.

Eileen Ambrose's column Sunday about the implications of the recent election for investors doesn't start off very well ( "What a split Congress means for investors," Nov. 7). She says the four major issues are "the deficit, economy, Social Security and Medicare. " I'll grant her "the economy" but the other three are just the same tired old right-wing Republican shibboleths — non-issues if we got the economy right, really. (Well, genuine health care reform would have helped Medicare.

The 2000s were that type of decade for investors as the stock market showed its fickle ways, brutalizing investors in two bear markets, then turning sweet when a rally seemed hard to believe. Through it all, investors wrestled with choices: fleeing to safety, hunting for a mutual fund they thought they could trust or trying to recover from losses. Now, said Morningstar Inc. director of mutual fund research Russel Kinnel, it's clear there was a lot of churn that didn't take investors far. "People's market timing was very poor," he said.

StraighterLine, a Baltimore-based online college education startup, expects to announce Friday that it raised $10 million from venture capital firms to market and grow its business. The company's student enrollment this year was about 1,500 students, and it expects to enroll 4,500 students over the next year. StraighterLine employs 11 people and plans to grow to more than 20 employees over the next 12 months, said Burck Smith, the company's chief executive officer and founder. The company offers online college courses for credit through a $99-a-month subscription model, an approach the company says is a response to the escalating cost of college education.

Breathe Books in Hampden says it will add a health-food cafe to its store next month. Owner Susan Weis-Bohlen says all the offerings will have at least one of five features: gluten free, vegan, vegetarian, raw or Ayurvedic -- Ayurveda is a holistic type of medicine that originated in India. This goes along with the store's stated mission to provide "books, music, and spiritual and inspirational items to help people continue their practice and journey. " "We will not be using white flour or white sugar; every ingredient will have some sort of nutritional quality," said Weis-Bohlen, who also lectures about Ayurvedic medicine at the University of Maryland's medical school.

When it comes to generating income from investments, Americans' expectations for returns are significantly higher than what they are actually earning, according to a survey released this morning by Legg Mason Inc. “Our survey is telling us that income-oriented investors in the U.S. are coming up well short of their goals - almost 3 percent short - and that number could be significant especially for retired investors who need to live on the income their...

Last Friday, the Labor Department reported that 236,000 new jobs were created in February. That's good news -- but not nearly good enough. Even if this rate were to continue, which seems unlikely, the United States wouldn't be back to pre-recession levels of unemployment for another four years. American workers remain in a bear market. More than 12 million Americans are still without work. Another 8 million are working part time but would rather be working full time. Many have given up looking.

Legg Mason Inc. might eliminate some of its less popular investment funds and some of its 32 offices as it continues to look at ways to operate more efficiently, the chief financial officer of the Baltimore-based money manager said Tuesday. CFO Pete Nachtwey comments about cost-cutting came in response to a question at a Citigroup financial conference in Boston. He said Legg now has more than 400 funds, and many of them haven't attracted sufficient assets. Those might be merged into other Legg funds or the money returned to investors in a move that also will "decrease the complexity of our fund complex," Nachtwey said.

What's the biggest political lesson of 2012? Some say it's that money doesn't count all that much. Even though billionaires and big corporations poured huge amounts into the 2012 election, they lost big. They learned the lesson and won't try to buy another election. Baloney. It's true their political investments didn't exactly pay off this time around. Republican operative Karl Rove's two giant political funds -- American Crossroads (a super PAC) and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (a so-called nonprofit "social welfare organization" that doesn't have to report its donors)

The possibility that the Tribune Co. will sell its newspapers after an imminent exit from bankruptcy has set off a new round of speculation about The Baltimore Sun's future ownership - along with expressions of interest from potential buyers. Bloomberg and Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported this week that Chicago-based Tribune is preparing to sell its newspaper companies. Bloomberg said Tribune is interviewing advisers for a potential sale; Reuters said Tribune plans to focus on its television stations.

When it comes to generating income from investments, Americans' expectations for returns are significantly higher than what they are actually earning, according to a survey released this morning by Legg Mason Inc. “Our survey is telling us that income-oriented investors in the U.S. are coming up well short of their goals - almost 3 percent short - and that number could be significant especially for retired investors who need to live on the income their...

CHAINSAW Al is gone, leaving many people who believed in him a lot poorer than they were before. Albert J. Dunlap was chairman of Sunbeam Corp. He belonged to the let's-crack-heads school of corporate management. During his stint at Sunbeam and before that at Scott Paper, he laid off at least 23,000 workers. Many American corporate executives have dismissed large numbers of employees, but what made Chainsaw special is that he did it all with great relish. Calling himself "Rambo in pinstripes," Mr. Dunlap tirelessly promoted his book, "Mean Business."

Legg Mason Inc. announced Wednesday that it would accelerate a quarterly dividend that was to be paid out in January. The cash dividend of 11 cents per share will be paid out on Dec. 28, instead of Jan. 7. The Baltimore-based investment company becomes the latest to rush to make dividend payments before the end of the year, while the tax rate on this income is still 15 percent. Unless a deal is reached between Congress and the White House, dividend income next year will once more be taxed as regular income, which could be as high as 39.6 percent.

TeleCommunication Systems Inc. is an Annapolis company that's racked up a big portfolio of technology and intellectual property around text messaging and E-911 services. The company's got a mix of government and commercial customers, and it routinely wins multi-million dollar federal contracts. As a result, it's a big employer in the area. But its stock price isn't doing so well. After peaking nearly $10 in late 2009, it's now down to $2.23  as of this morning. And that's got J. Carlo Cannell, managing member of Cannell Capital, apparently worried enough to start pressuring TSYS to come up with a clearer vision, and consider a sale or merger.