Investors

Apple made headlines again last week, but this time they weren't entirely about the new iPad. The tech behemoth announced that it would start paying a quarterly dividend worth $2.65 per share beginning in July. That amounts to nearly $10 billion to be paid out in the first year alone. "Apple is the leader here," says Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst with Standard & Poor's, who adds that the company will put pressure on other technology firms to start paying dividends.

The Village of Cross Keys, an upscale North Baltimore shopping center and one of the earliest projects of Columbia founder James W. Rouse, has been sold by General Growth Properties to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a retail and office property investor, according to a notice to tenants delivered Wednesday. The center on Falls Road is now being managed by Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., according to the memo to retailers from the center's management office. The open-air shopping center has about 30 shops and restaurants, including Williams-Sonoma, Talbots, Ruth Shaw and Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa. Chicago-based General Growth, which owns most of the malls in the Baltimore area, has been selling off noncore assets to boost its balance sheet since emerging from bankruptcy in 2010.

Derek Gabbard wasn't dreaming of California when he sought to raise investment capital for his Baltimore-based cybersecurity firm. But the CEO of Lookingglass Cyber Solutions lucked out with a connection to venture capitalists in the state that dwarfs all others in terms of venture capital. With a San Francisco investment firm taking the lead on the investment and a Maryland firm following, Gabbard recently raised $5 million. Such deals, where Mid-Atlantic technology companies straddle both coasts for investors, have been cropping up lately, though the dynamics underlying them vary.

Facebook filed paperwork Wednesday to allow it to go public this spring, a deal being closely watched internationally - and especially at Baltimore's T. Rowe Price Group, which holds a stake of about $400 million in the social-networking behemoth through its mutual funds. The initial public offering, known as an IPO, is expected to be one of the largest in the nation's history. Facebook said in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents that it hopes to raise $5 billion and revealed that it made $1 billion profit last year.

If you had slept Rip Van Winkle-style through 2011, you'd be awakening now to find that your stock portfolio was much the same as you left it. Presuming you stayed awake, you endured a volatile year for equities. Market swings were so violent that by the third quarter many investors threw in the towel for a loss. Had they stuck it out, they would have found that stocks — despite all those gyrations — ended flat for the year. That's past. The new year is a good time to poll market analysts on their outlook and to find out if there are moves small investors should take — or avoid — in 2012.

A Maryland financier who helped privatize the Seagirt Marine Terminal in 2009 is trying to sell Congress on an ambitious, $250 billion plan he says would modernize the nation's crumbling infrastructure while creating millions of jobs. Christopher H. Lee, whose investment firm owns the company managing the terminal, is pressing lawmakers on Capitol Hill to create an independent board that would oversee billions of dollars in highway, airport and mass transit projects. His plan also calls for speeding government approval of those projects.

The organizers of the Baltimore Grand Prix are awaiting a vote from shareholders on a proposed company takeover that would greatly dilute their ownership — but could save the race from bankruptcy. More than two-thirds of shareholders have voted in favor of the plan in which former Goldman Sachs and Constellation Energy executive Felix J. Dawson would assume leadership of Baltimore Racing Development Inc., the company that ran the Grand Prix, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.

Jim Loukota of Baltimore County is trying to make the best of a soured investment. The 60-year-old retired electrician owns 100 shares of First Mariner Bancorp that he bought for about $14.50 per share in the late 1990s and closed Monday a little over 5 cents a share. He wants to sell the stock in the Baltimore-based bank holding company before the end of the year so he can use the loss to offset income on his tax return. But the discount brokerage that originally sold him the stock says it doesn't deal in shares trading below $1. And he's having trouble finding anyone else willing to help him sell his paper stock certificate.

With the company that put on Baltimore's inaugural Grand Prix struggling to pay its debts, a disagreement is revving up over whether the city did enough to ensure the race's financial viability. Jay Davidson, an investor in the race's operator, Baltimore Racing Development, suggested in an op-ed article in The Baltimore Sun that the city should have offered more subsidies to race promoters for the Labor Day weekend event. The company "faced financial obstacles from the start" that promoters of similar events in other cities don't confront, he said.

Joe Graziose and his family have recently moved into their fourth home at the same location — the Ritz-Carlton Residences along Baltimore's Inner Harbor. "We've tested locations on all fronts of the building," he said. "Our last unit overlooked Federal Hill. " It is not that the Grazioses are fickle or hard to please. On the contrary. As senior vice president of RXR Realty, developers of the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Baltimore, as well as one of its investors, Graziose has always opened his and wife Jackie's home to prospective buyers looking for a unit in the upscale complex.