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Jerome W. "Jerry" Geckle, a high school dropout who rose from a keypunch operator to become chairman and chief executive officer of Peterson Howell and Heather, the Hunt Valley fleet leasing and mortgage company, died Oct. 22 of pneumonia at his Parkton farm. He was 81. Mr. Geckle, the youngest of nine children, was born in Baltimore and raised in Waverly, where his father was a sextant at St. Bernard Roman Catholic Church and his mother a homemaker. "As a boy, he had worked on a farm picking vegetables to help make ends meet," said a son, Stephen L. Geckle of Parkton.

From texting to browsing the Web to eating in the car, driver distraction has become a growing problem on the roadways. In 2010, more than 3,000 people died in accidents believed to have been caused by distracted driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In December, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended a nationwide ban on using smartphones while driving, including the use of hand-held devices for non-emergencies. It's against the law to talk on a hand-held phone while driving in Maryland.

PHH Corp. said yesterday that it has consolidated its global relocation and real estate management operations under Stephen A. Fragapane, a senior vice president at PHH and president of its relocation subsidiary.The Hunt Valley-based business-services company said the move was designed to provide comprehensive business services worldwide and to smooth international moves for business executives and their families."Many of our large transnational clients, such as Digital and Exxon in the United States; Monsanto Canada Inc., Canadian National Railway and the Bank of Nova Scotia in Canada; and Rolls-Royce, British Petroleum and IBM in Europe need a relocation service provider with capabilities that cross geographic boundaries," PHH Chairman Robert D. Kunisch said in a statement.

Jerome W. "Jerry" Geckle, a high school dropout who rose from a keypunch operator to become chairman and chief executive officer of Peterson Howell and Heather, the Hunt Valley fleet leasing and mortgage company, died Oct. 22 of pneumonia at his Parkton farm. He was 81. Mr. Geckle, the youngest of nine children, was born in Baltimore and raised in Waverly, where his father was a sextant at St. Bernard Roman Catholic Church and his mother a homemaker. "As a boy, he had worked on a farm picking vegetables to help make ends meet," said a son, Stephen L. Geckle of Parkton.

Spain and Italy are potential areas of growth for PHH Corp.'s fleet management business over the next two years, with Mexico a possible growth area later, PHH Chairman Robert D. Kunisch said yesterday.But Mr. Kunisch, speaking after the company's annual meeting, said the exploration of new markets in Europe and Mexico must await conquest of the difficult -- yet promising -- German market.On a global scale, PHH manages more than 460,000 vehicles used by corporations. And while analysts consider its U.S. business in this field to be strong, the company is seeking to expand its scope around the globe, said Joachim Diedrich, senior vice president of European vehicle management services.

William B. Hendricks, retired vice chairman of the board and general counsel and secretary of the PHH Corp., died Wednesday of cancer at his home in Rockland. He was 73.He retired in 1983, 30 years after he joined the company that provides vehicle fleet, mortgage banking and executive relocation services primarily to businesses.He became secretary of PHH in 1957, vice president in 1958 and senior vice president in 1967. He was elected to the board in 1971 and was named vice chairman in 1976.

In the simple religion of Wall Street -- work hard, grow profits, and you'll be rewarded with an earthly paradise of high stock prices -- the folks at PHH Corp. feel a little like capitalism's version of Job.The company appears to have done just about everything right. It has reported 12 straight quarters of improved profits, raised dividends almost yearly since going public in 1958 and shows every sign of continued profitability.Yet PHH shares have suffered the investor's equivalent of a curse, with the stock price languishing below what it would bring the company were broken up and sold.

Boosted by more mortgage service sales to membership organizations, PHH Corp. yesterday reported a 10.8 percent increase in net income for its first fiscal quarter.The results marked the 15th consecutive quarterly increase for the Hunt Valley-based company and the fifth in a row that reached 10 percent or more."We are very pleased," Robert D. Kunisch, PHH's chairman and chief executive officer told about 200 stockholders at the company's annual meeting yesterday. "PHH is consistently meeting the changing needs of the marketplace."

A Baltimore County grand jury has indicted the former director of PHH Corp.'s tax department, charging him with embezzling nearly $540,000 from the Hunt Valley-based business-service company.Marion Holmes, 51, of the 300 block of Sherwood Road in Hunt Valley, was indicted Monday on three counts of theft for allegedly taking $538,228.37 between Jan. 14, 1988, and Aug. 14, 1991, according to Terry King, an assistant state's attorney in Baltimore County.PHH filed suit last year against Maryland National Bank and Signet Bank/Maryland, charging breach of contract and negligence for allegedly cashing or transferring 40 checks written on PHH accounts on behalf of Mr. Holmes.

Hunt Valley-based PHH Corp. will help the federal savings-and-loan cleanup agency unload 929 Texas homes under a contract that could open the door for millions of dollars of future government business.The Resolution Trust Corp. announced yesterday that it ha awarded the contract for disposition of the properties to PHH Asset Management and Southwest Harvard Group, a Hispanic-owned asset management company. The homes are either in conservatorship or receivership under the RTC Dallas office.

F. Lester Simon Jr., a retired Peterson, Howell and Heather executive who enjoyed photography and painting, died Friday at St. Joseph Medical Center of complications from a fall. He was 91. Mr. Simon was born in Baltimore and raised in Windsor Hills. He was a 1935 graduate of Forest Park High School and earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1939. During World War II, he enlisted in the Navy and served as an officer in the Pacific aboard the USS Sabine, a fleet oiler that had been built and launched at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point shipyard.

Housing gloomy, despite uptick Sales of previously owned homes nudged up in November, but that didn't improve the broader picture of a feeble U.S. housing market racked by record-high foreclosures and harder-to-get credit. Even with the small 0.4 percent increase, the sales pace was still the second-lowest on record. Home prices also dropped 3.3 percent from November 2006. PHH's sale falls apart PHH Corp. announced that a deal to sell itself fell through because of financing problems.

The collapse of PHH Corp.'s deal to sell itself is a lesson for these credit-crunched times: If you're in the mortgage business, don't count on anyone getting the money to buy you - no matter how decent your prospects look. PHH agreed in March to sell out for $1.8 billion to General Electric Co., which wanted the company's Baltimore County-based vehicle fleet leasing arm and had agreed to immediately resell PHH's mortgage business to the Blackstone Group. But the complex deal began to unravel in September as the outlook for mortgage companies sharply worsened.

The mortgage crisis and resulting credit crunch could sink a deal to buy the parent of PHH Arval, a vehicle fleet leasing company with 1,000 employees in Sparks, the company said yesterday. The disclosure sent shares of parent PHH Corp. down nearly 15 percent, or $4.26, to close at $24.24, reflecting investor skepticism that PHH will be able to close a deal announced in March to be sold for $31.50 a share. Under that deal, which valued the company at $1.8 billion, General Electric Co. subsidiary GE Capital Solutions planned to buy all of PHH, fold the fleet leasing operations into its own and immediately sell PHH's larger mortgage unit to Blackstone Group, a New York-based private equity firm.

MARYLAND Death penalty repeal fails Efforts to repeal the death penalty in Maryland were dealt an apparently fatal blow yesterday when a key state Senate committee defeated the measure, leaving a court-ordered moratorium on state executions in place and some legislators weighing a study of the issue. pg 1A National Guard report released The Maryland Army National Guard had a cutthroat culture in the Recruiting and Retention Battalion where military discipline and bearing took "a back seat to selling" military service on recruits, according to an investigative report released yesterday.

PHH Arval, the auto fleet management business founded in Baltimore more than 60 years ago, will become part of a corporate giant for the second time in a decade. GE Capital Solutions, the leasing, financing and asset management unit of General Electric Co., said yesterday that it will buy all of PHH Corp. for $1.8 billion, integrate the Sparks-based fleet management business with its own and immediately sell off the Mount Laurel, N.J., residential mortgage business to the Blackstone Group, a private investment firm, for an undisclosed amount.

PHH Corp. has filed suit against two of the state's largest banks, saying they allowed a PHH employee to embezzle more than $500,000 from the company over the past three years.The large business services company in Hunt Valley charged Maryland National Bank and Signet Bank/Maryland with breach of contract and negligence for cashing or transferring 40 checks written on PHH accounts on behalf of the employee, according to the suit.The suit, filed Friday in Baltimore County Circuit Court, is seeking restitution of $538,228.

PHH Corp., a mortgage and fleet management company with a large operation in Sparks, said yesterday that it must restate almost five years of earnings after an audit found glaring errors in its financial statements. The company, which has its headquarters in Mount Laurel, N.J., previously acknowledged that it has "material weaknesses" in its books. It failed to file an annual report required by the Securities and Exchange Commission for 2005. It also has missed quarterly filings through June this year.