Maryland Companies

Executives and board members at some of Maryland's most profitable companies have lucrative side arrangements with the companies they run and oversee. Edwin F. Hale Sr., the chairman, chief executive and largest stockholder at First Mariner Bancorp, owned the bank's headquarters building in Canton until selling it to his bank earlier this year for $20 million. Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., which is controlled by four brothers who own most of the common stock, leases aircraft owned by two of the siblings, David D. Smith and Frederick G. Smith.

Louis S. "Shorty" Levin said later that he sensed something odd when his shipwrecking company sold that rundown troop carrier shortly after World War II. He and his older brother, George, sold scrap metal in Charles County, but the men in New York interested in this particular ship talked about carrying passengers, as the ship had before the war when it steamed the Old Bay Line route from Baltimore to Norfolk, Va. Indeed the deal turned out quite unlike...

William F. Spengler, A number of Maryland's biotechnology companies will have prospective new drugs in their final round of clinical testing this year, a key stage for some in their efforts to fully evolve from research organizations into market-driven businesses. Companies that either have drugs in late-stage trials - or are planning to start them this year - include MedImmune Inc., Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc., Advancis Pharmaceuticals Corp., United Therapeutics Corp. and Nabi Biopharmaceuticals Corp.

For years, Baltimore-based architecture and design firm RTKL Associates earned about 15 percent of its profits from overseas projects tax-free, thanks to a federal export subsidy designed to help U.S. firms compete abroad. Then the World Trade Organization declared the subsidy illegal, leaving RTKL and thousands of other U.S. firms wondering what would happen to their profits from overseas business. They got their answer this week when Congress declared RTKL - a firm that makes most of its money turning out drawings and plans - a U.S. manufacturer deserving of a tax break.

The National Security Agency is stepping out of the shadows to be a shadowy business partner, a potential gold mine for Maryland. The agency said yesterday that it plans to spend at least several million dollars in the short term to invest in and buy from local startups that develop high technology useful to its code-making, code-breaking and eavesdropping mission. The NSA also wants to push some of its own innovations outside the fence of its high-security Fort Meade instillation and into Maryland companies that can develop and commercialize ideas - in large part so it can buy back the finished products.

Americans are aging, and so are their joints and bones. As rickety bones have made walking harder for millions of the elderly, countless companies have created medical devices to make getting around easier, creating a thriving industry in the process. Consumers spent $31.2 billion in 2000 on durable medical devices, which include artificial limbs, canes, wheelchairs, crutches, canes and hearing aids. That's nearly double the amount spent 10 years before, according to federal figures. Invacare Corp.

GAITHERSBURG - Even as the number of new cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome seems to be slowing overseas, a team of scientists here is revving up its effort to keep people from getting infected in the first place. Researchers at GenVec, a small biopharmaceutical company that normally fights enemies such as cancer and HIV, has begun the painstaking work it will take to come up with a SARS vaccine - if, that is, they can come up with one at all. Their approach is among the newest in the field of vaccine research.

A subsidiary of struggling Allegheny Energy Inc. received permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday to borrow up to $2 billion on a secured basis to shore up liquidity after defaulting on key credit agreements this month. The Hagerstown energy company said yesterday that it is discussing with its banks borrowing about $1.3 billion to restructure its existing debt. The restructured financing would probably be secured by power plants owned by the defaulting subsidiary, Allegheny Energy Supply.

Steve Salmi will go anywhere to fix a ship. The retired Coast Guard naval engineer and his small crew travel up and down the East Coast and throughout the Great Lakes in pursuit of work, mostly aboard Coast Guard vessels. This year, it has been tough to find. After Sept. 11, the Coast Guard's 232 ships and 1,400 boats became so busy guarding ports from potential terrorist threats that many postponed the kind of minor repair contracts that keep Pasadena-based Salmi and Co. in business. At the same time, a sluggish economy and other market forces have made this a tough year for small companies that repair shops.

Despite the nation's sluggish economy, exports by Maryland companies rose 8 percent last year, the second consecutive year of growth according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. Maryland exported $4.97 billion in goods last year, while the nation's exports totaled $731 billion, down 6 percent from 2000. "I certainly didn't expect this ... [in terms of] national trends," said Peter C. O'Neill, director of the international trade office in the state's Department of Business and Economic Development.