Stamas

AlliedSignal Inc. is "actively pursuing" the sale of its 800-employee Communications Systems division on Joppa Road in Towson, a spokeswoman confirmed yesterday.The aerospace and automotive company, which has its headquarters in New Jersey, wants to unload the plant so it can "better focus its resources on its core electronics and avionics businesses," said Maria Trintis-Stamas, a local spokeswoman for the company.A sale also would "align its Towson-based operation with a new owner that has a strategic interest in our core competency here, which is advanced secure communications technologies," Trintis-Stamas said.

From a ladder top, John Urquhart starts at the peak of the Stamas family's 12-foot Christmas tree and works his way down and around, spinning a wondrous web of huge and small poinsettia balls, harps, garlands, gilded artificial ivy and blooms to create a "really classy, rich and natural look" in gold and white."

Layoff notices went out this week to more than two dozen salaried employees at the AlliedSignal Communications Systems plant in Towson as part of a downsizing effort announced at the end of July.About the same number of employees took voluntary separation packages in August, for a total layoff of 50 to 55 workers, said company spokeswoman Maria Trintis Stamas."It was a tough business decision that we needed to make to help align our business costs with sales revenues," she said.The Towson plant employs roughly 1,000.

Salaried workers at the AlliedSignal Communications Systems plant in Towson were notified yesterday that an unspecified number of them will be losing their jobs by the end of the month.Alan Dietrich, vice president and general manager of the Joppa Road defense plant called the approximately 500 members of the management staff into a meeting at 9 a.m. and asked that some accept a voluntary separation plan.The work force reduction will be "under 10 percent" of the management staff, said Maria Trintis Stamas, a spokeswoman for the plant, who declined to be more specific.

In a move that involves elite law firms and one of the city's top lawyers, Baltimore attorney George P. Stamas said yesterday that he is leaving Piper & Marbury after 17 years to launch a local office of the venerable Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.Mr. Stamas, 45, widely seen as among the city's most successful corporate lawyers, will become senior partner in Wilmer's Baltimore office, leading a group of about eight lawyers here. Other partners will be John B. Watkins V, who worked with Mr. Stamas at Piper, and Bryan Slone, a tax lawyer already at Wilmer.

About 160 workers have been laid off at the AlliedSignal Inc. Communications Systems plant in Towson due to declining defense business, the company confirmed yesterday.Another 45 layoffs planned for early March were averted by the recent addition of work on the Patriot missile."We had to scale down the size of the work force because of an anticipated decline in sales this year," said AlliedSignal spokeswoman Maria Trentis Stamas.She said plant officials expect sales, which have ranged between $180 million and $200 million, to be off about 15 percent.

George Stamas, cover boy?Mr. Stamas, the deal-making Baltimore lawyer who counts Orioles owner Peter Angelos and Baltimore magazine publisher Stephen Geppi among his clients, is exactly that in this month's American Lawyer.He is rated among the nation's top "young" lawyers, those age 45 or younger. His picture appears on the magazine's cover, along with others singled out for the honor.Mr. Stamas, 44, is the only Baltimore attorney listed in the survey.A partner at Piper & Marbury, Mr. Stamas has an impressive list of clients and accomplishments.

Prospective NFL franchise owner Peter Angelos held a three-hour meeting yesterday with the trustees selling the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a session Angelos described as "very positive" but team officials downplayed it as one of a dozen or so introductory exchanges they expect to hold with interested bidders."