Payout

Donald F. in Minneapolis is fed up with a mutual fund in his IRA and is ready to make the leap to something better. He just doesn't want to leave anything on the table. "I don't know if the fund will be paying dividends this year," he said in an e-mail. "How can I determine if a fund is going to pay dividends and get an estimate of how much?" It's a question a lot of investors ask at this time of year, but it also shows an alarming lack of understanding about how mutual funds actually work, and it highlights how ignorance of the finer points of funds can be costly.

The Maryland Insurance Administration announced yesterday that it will pay $500,000 -- its largest payout ever -- to 171 consumers who lost deposit money when Regency Homes filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1998.The money will come from proceeds of a surety bond that Regency filed with the administration just months before it filed Chapter 7. However, the amount being released represents a little less than half of the $1.02 million that the administration could verify Regency had on deposit.

WASHINGTON -- At the southern end of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, where motorists spill onto New York Avenue and into the District of Columbia, seemingly half of Maryland was waiting outside a Mobil gas station the other night."

Alex. Brown. Inc.'s top five executives received $14.6 million in bonuses in 1996 after revenues and income soared to record levels, the company's proxy statement said.A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard, the Baltimore-based brokerage and investment banking company's chairman and chief executive, received a $4.4 million bonus, up 57 percent from 1995, according to the proxy statement, which will be released by the firm to the public today.Combined with a base salary of $200,000 and a long-term incentive plan payout of $700,887, the total package came to $5.3 million.

DID YOU REALIZE that many people recently became discouraged with dividends because they slipped below 3 percent in 1992 and remained low ever since? Especially in this bull market, you often hear, "Dividends don't matter."But don't count them out. Over 70 years, dividends accounted for 43 percent of the total return on the Standard & Poor's 500 index stocks, which compounded at 10.7 percent a year. But because of stocks' meteoric rise recently, dividends slipped to 17 percent of the S&P stocks' total return.

Uplifted by record earnings in the initial three months of 1996, troubled developer Interstate General Co. Ltd. Partnership yesterday declared its first quarterly cash dividend in two years.The Charles County development firm, which faces sentencing next month after being convicted of various felony wetlands law violations, will pay shareholders as of June 3 a 6 cents per share dividend on June 13.IGC had not paid a quarterly cash dividend since a 5 cents per unit payout in June 1994.In all, IGC will pay shareholders -- formally called unitholders because of the company's limited partnership status -- a total of $615,400, based on its average number of units outstanding in the first quarter.

SHORT SUBJECTS for the long pull:GROWTH GIANTS: Boeing, Coca-Cola, CSX, Federal Home Loan, GE, Merck, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble appear under "Core Stocks for Long-Term Appreciation" in S&P Outlook, Sept. 11.STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: "Internet and multimedia glamour stocks have hogged the recent limelight, but an unlikely industry has also performed spectacularly this year -- education. Examples: Children's Comprehensive and DeVry." (Fortune, Sept. 30.)WALL STREET WATCH: "Tired of chasing 'hot' funds?

In yesterday's editions, the payout that the Provident Bancshares Corp. chairman and chief executive, Carl W. Stearn, could receive if he voluntarily leaves the company within a year after an acquisition was reported incorrectly. In fact, Mr. Stearn could receive approximately $180,000.The Sun regrets the error.Provident Bankshares Corp.'s net income shot up 43 percent in the first quarter as earnings were driven by strong increases for consumer loans, and fee-generating products and services.

Campaigning in Baltimore, Republican presidential candidate Lamar Alexander said yesterday that a controversial $236,000 payment to him from Lockheed Martin Corp. is no big deal.The money -- part of an $82 million payout to outgoing officials of Martin Marietta, which has merged with Lockheed Corp. -- represents "my pay for being on the board," Mr. Alexander said."It is the amount of money that I would have been entitled to whether I stayed or whether I went," he said.Mr. Alexander is leaving Martin Marietta's board this month because of the merger.

Members of the Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants are answering readers' tax questions through April 15.Q: I am a 65-year-old retiree. I receive payouts of deferred compensation from a life and annuity insurance company. I received a W-2 form that reports the amount of the payout as wages. Shall I list the payout as wages? Do I tell Social Security that I am receiving wages, or do I list this deferred compensation payout at some other place on the tax return?A: Since you received a W-2 Form, you should report the income as wages on your return.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration is seeking ratepayer relief and other concessions from Constellation Energy Group as part of behind-the-scenes negotiations related to the Baltimore company's proposed deal to sell half its nuclear power business to a French utility. According to internal correspondence obtained by The Baltimore Sun, O'Malley's office and Constellation may be nearing a settlement agreement that could include immediate electricity price reductions for strapped consumers, longer-term discounts and commitments that the company will make investments in environmentally friendly energy projects.

Three years ago in Iraq, Saad Ahmed was hailed by Americans as a hero after he extinguished a fire in a Humvee with five U.S. Army soldiers inside. Unfortunately, the danger for Ahmed did not end then. A year ago, the 33-year-old Iraqi nearly died working as a translator for the U.S. military. A roadside bomb mangled both his legs at the knee, scorched his left hand, damaged nerves in his eyes and boggled his memory. For weeks afterward, he floated in a coma-like state. $5,000 payment and no further coverage, he said.

Mount St. Mary's, a tiny Catholic university in Emmitsburg, won its first NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament game ever last night, beating Coppin State, 69-60, to continue an improbable postseason run for its 2,100 students. For schools like Mount, Coppin and the University of Maryland Baltimore County, just making the 65-team tournament already has generated headlines, excitement - and money. Several Mount St. Mary's administrators described the benefits that a smaller school gets from participating as "priceless."

Wall Street has repeatedly sounded alarms to spur working Americans to save more for retirement, but it has been less interested in helping convert nest eggs to spendable, post-paycheck income. Of course, mutual funds emphasizing dividends have long been available, along with plans for withdrawing principal. More recently, the industry has offered life-cycle funds that become more conservative as investors age. And some companies have been offering advice, like the so-called Monte Carlo calculations, that show the odds of what a given rate of spending will provide for the rest of one's life.

Donald F. in Minneapolis is fed up with a mutual fund in his IRA and is ready to make the leap to something better. He just doesn't want to leave anything on the table. "I don't know if the fund will be paying dividends this year," he said in an e-mail. "How can I determine if a fund is going to pay dividends and get an estimate of how much?" It's a question a lot of investors ask at this time of year, but it also shows an alarming lack of understanding about how mutual funds actually work, and it highlights how ignorance of the finer points of funds can be costly.

If you're a pigeon in Leonard Green's lab, pecking at a green light gets you a tasty food pellet immediately. Pecking a red light means waiting - and oh, how eight seconds can try a pigeon's patience. But then the chute opens and you're rewarded handsomely - 30 pellets! Which do you choose? Most of the time, the green light. For a pigeon, it seems, a bird in hand is worth at least five in the bush. People, of course, aren't so different, and Green, a Washington University psychologist, can prove it with laboratory experiments on people, rats and pigeons.

December typically brings cold weather, warm greetings and some of the least-worthwhile "common-sense" mutual fund advice known to investors. This year looks to be no exception, as the early estimates show that 2006 will test investors' knowledge of how capital gains taxes are applied to mutual funds and how they should react. The rule of thumb in question starts out well enough, but goes wrong in the execution. It goes something like this: Never buy a fund in December if it is making a big capital gains payout.

DALLAS -- David Edmondson leaves RadioShack Corp. with a black eye for enhancing his resume. His reputation also took a blow from the 25 percent plunge in the retailer's share price during his nine-month tenure as chief executive. But a payout of about $1.5 million in cash and stock could help ease the pain. That kind of money grates on people unaccustomed to the golden handshakes, golden handcuffs, golden parachutes and multimillion-dollar compensation packages that are commonplace in executive suites.

Black & Decker Corp. is boosting the yearly compensation of its seven outside directors by $10,000 to a total payout of $150,000 each, the Towson maker of power tools disclosed yesterday in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The directors' compensation is considerably higher than the median received by non-employee directors of manufacturing companies, according to a survey by the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research group in New York. Total median compensation rose to $72,750 this year from $69,620 last year, according to the Conference Board's annual survey of pay for independent directors.

NEW YORK - Victims of the Sept. 11 attacks received more than $38 billion in compensation - a figure 30 times the size of the largest previous disaster payout and one that is unlikely to be matched, according to a Rand Corp. study released yesterday. Insurance companies and the federal government provided more than 90 percent of the payments, and some victims were overpaid while others fell through the cracks, according to the Santa Monica-based think tank. But the compensation - unprecedented in scope and in the mix of programs - may not happen again, Rand said, because of new moves by the government to limit liabilities and requirements by insurance companies for businesses to purchase separate terrorism insurance.