Joint Venture

W.R. Grace & Co. is expanding one of its joint ventures to provide more products and services to petroleum refiners in places such as the Middle East, the Columbia-based chemical maker announced Wednesday. The joint venture, Advanced Refining Technologies, was created to develop and supply hydroprocessing catalysts to refiners. The venture is a partnership between Grace, Chevron Products Company and Kuwait Catalyst Co. Kuwait Catalyst, which provides these catalysts to the Persian Gulf region, is the largest shareholder.

The Maryland medical society and attorney general's office launched a website Saturday aimed at helping doctors file complaints with the state when insurance companies refuse to cover patient care. "Essentially, our goal was to educate our patients and our physicians that there is an avenue for these complaints," said Gene Ransom III, CEO of MedChi, the state medical society. "We thought, 'Let's make it easier.'" The site, called Insurance Watch, is hosted on the Internet by the medical society.

DETROIT -- Mitsubishi Motors Corp. finally agreed to buy Chrysler Corp.'s half-interest in their joint U.S. carmaking venture for $100 million, ending months of prickly negotiations against a heavily political backdrop.The buyout was triggered by Chrysler's desperate need for cash, but it also enables Mitsubishi to portray itself as helping out a company known for Japan-bashing. And it gets Chrysler out of a politically awkward partnership.The two companies said yesterday that they would continue their other commercial arrangements.

Constellation Energy Group, which is selling itself to Exelon Corp., reported a loss Friday in the fourth quarter, what is expected to be the energy giant's last earnings release as a publicly traded Baltimore company. Its earnings came out before the Maryland Public Service Commission approved the proposed $7.9 billion proposed merger between Constellation and Exelon, contingent on several dozen conditions. It lost $583.6 million, or $2.91 per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with a profit of $159.8 million, or 80 cents per share, in the corresponding period the previous year.

Baltimore-based Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. said yesterday that it has signed a letter of intent with Identix Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., to form a joint venture company to provide fingerprint services at 30 to 40 of its testing centers and locations for adult professional education.The educational services company said the venture is a natural progression from testing that the two companies give applicants who want to become professionals in such fields as teaching and the stock market."The same people who have to be tested also have to have their fingerprints taken," said Doug Becker, president and co-chief executive officer of Sylvan.

A new joint venture of two established shipping firms will begin service between South America and the port of Baltimore's Seagirt Marine Terminal Oct. 7, the Maryland Port Administration said yesterday.Mediterranean Shipping Co. of Geneva, Switzerland, and Empremar S.A., the national steamship line of Chile, will team up in a venture that will call at Seagirt once every three weeks initially, and then every two weeks after the service is established.The port administration says the venture will handle 6,000 containers of cargo per year.

C Bethlehem Steel Corp. announced yesterday plans to form a joint venture with Britain's largest steelmaker that could cost up to 2,000 jobs and will result in a half-billion-dollar restructuring charge in the fourth quarter of 1990.Company spokesmen said the proposed venture would have no effect on Bethlehem's Sparrows Point plant in southeastern Baltimore County or on the roughly 7,000 people who work there.Yesterday's announcement that a letter of intent had been signed to study a joint venture with British Steel Corp.

Potomac Electric Power Co. and a New York alternative energy supplier have formed a partnership, a move that could have wide-ranging and negative implications for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s planned merger with Pepco.The joint venture between the Washington utility and Trigen Energy Corp., which directly competes with BGE in downtown Baltimore, was formed to study the potential for heating and cooling federal government buildings in Washington."The federal government spends millions of dollars each year to run steam plants in downtown Washington," said Thomas R. Casten, Trigen Energy's president and chief executive.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has teamed with a biopharmaceutical company to develop and market drugs and processes for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, the university announced yesterday.Through a new company named Gryphon Pharmaceuticals Inc., the joint venture between Osiris Therapeutics Inc. and the university will focus on cells responsible for blood and immune system formation and maintenance. The university expects thatGryphon products could have applications in the treatment of leukemia, anemia and some tumors.

The Ryland Group announced yesterday that it plans to export factory-built homes to Moscow through a joint venture with two Russian partners.Ryland, which through its trading company already has an agreement to sell the prefabricated homes in St. Petersburg, hopes eventually to have homebuilding factories in several Russian cities.Officials of the Columbia company, one of the country's biggest homebuilding and mortgage-finance companies, said the profit potential of such ventures remains unclear.

The federal nuclear regulator approved Thursday the proposed sale of Constellation Energy Group to Chicago-based Exelon Corp. The decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission means the proposed $7.9 billion merger has two remaining regulatory hurdles to clear. The Maryland Public Service Commission is expected to issue a decision Friday, while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also needs to rule on the deal, which would create the largest competitive energy company in the United States.

Exelon Corp. and Constellation Energy Group have reached an agreement with Electricite de France, a large Constellation shareholder, for the French utility to withdraw its opposition to a proposed merger between the companies. The terms of the agreement address Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, a joint venture between Constellation and EDF that owns and operates three nuclear facilities with generating units in Maryland and New York. No payment was made by either party associated with the agreement, which reaffirms the terms of the joint venture.

The Howard Hughes Corp. moved closer this month to firming up plans for an 817-unit residential development in Columbia's town center by naming two partners who well help carry out the project. Howard Hughes announced that it will be working with Kettler, of McLean, Va., a privately held company with a strong record of multi-family housing development.. Also involved with the partnership is Orchard Development of Ellicott City, founded in 1979 by Maryland home builder Earl Armiger.

W.R. Grace & Co. is expanding one of its joint ventures to provide more products and services to petroleum refiners in places such as the Middle East, the Columbia-based chemical maker announced Wednesday. The joint venture, Advanced Refining Technologies, was created to develop and supply hydroprocessing catalysts to refiners. The venture is a partnership between Grace, Chevron Products Company and Kuwait Catalyst Co. Kuwait Catalyst, which provides these catalysts to the Persian Gulf region, is the largest shareholder.

Metals manufacturing company Worthington Industries Inc. plans to lay off 59 employees at its Edgemere facility beginning July 13, company officials confirmed Tuesday. Worthington Industries owns the Dietrich Metal Framing facility, which makes framing materials for residential and commercial construction. The closure comes after Worthington Industries announced a joint venture with Marubeni-Itochu Steel America Inc. in February, combining Dietrich Metal Framing with ClarkWestern Building Systems.

The majority owner of Maryland's two thoroughbred tracks has agreed to a deal that would transfer all of its racing assets, including Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, to its chairman and chief executive Frank Stronach. In exchange, Stronach will give up control of Ontario-based MI Developments, according to the agreement announced late Monday. Stronach currently controls 57 percent of the real estate company's voting power. The restructuring means the racing operations would become a separate entity with assets including Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields, both in California; Gulfstream Park in Florida and horse racing technology firm AmTote International, the Hunt Valley-based electronic bet-processing company.

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged yesterday that four Connecticut residents illegally traded on inside information about a pending research agreement between Gaithersburg-based MedImmune Inc. and Merck & Co. Inc.According to the SEC, Robert J. Young of Old Saybrook learned in June 1991 that Merck and MedImmune were considering a joint venture to develop a vaccine for the human immunodeficiency virus, the SEC alleged. Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., is one of the nation's largest drug manufacturers.

As part of its effort to focus on its core retail business, the Rouse Co. has sold some of its Las Vegas office and industrial buildings to a joint venture formed by affiliates of Rouse and Stoltz Bros. Ltd. Columbia-based Rouse received about $85 million after costs and expenses and a minority stake in the venture in exchange for 37 buildings and some undeveloped land in Hughes Airport and Hughes Cheyenne Centers, the company said. Affiliates of Delaware-based Stoltz, which used the acquisition to expand into the Las Vegas market, will manage the venture.

One of the largest collections of property on Baltimore's Inner Harbor — the last four undeveloped parcels of the HarborView community — was put up for sale Monday. CB Richard Ellis, or CBRE, a commercial real estate services firm, announced Monday that it has set Feb. 1 as the deadline for prospective buyers to express interest in acquiring or investing in one or more of the parcels at HarborView, the upscale community along Key Highway that Baltimore businessman Richard Swirnow and others have built over the past two decades.

When Maryland-based Discovery Communications and Oprah Winfrey announced a partnership in 2009 to launch Winfrey's OWN cable channel, it immediately vaulted the Silver Spring media operation into a new league. Oprah's move to Discovery was the talk of the entertainment industry, and within hours of the announcement, J.P. Morgan was circulating a financial analysis titled "Much Ado About Oprah. " "Discovery appears to be the winner in this announcement," the Morgan analysis said.