Usfg

USF&G Corp.'s decision to move out of its Inner Harbor signature tower to its corporate campus in Mount Washington is another blow to Baltimore's downtown business district. Earlier this week, First Fidelity Bancorp caused a shock by announcing that about 500 employees of the Bank of Baltimore it acquired would lose their jobs by summer.These moves symbolize the strictly bottom-line approach of managements that are turning around companies previously teetering on the brink of disaster as a result of 1980s excesses and misjudgments.

Michael B. Casey, a retired bonding insurance administrator and freelance writer, died of cancer Monday at Memorial Hospital in Easton. The former Towson resident was 76. Mr. Casey was born in Hartford, Conn., and raised in New York City, Des Moines, Iowa, and Denver, where he graduated from high school in 1949. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1953 from St. Regis University in Denver and did postgraduate work at the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

USF&G Corp. continued its program of paring down and concentrating on its insurance business by selling an Atlanta investment consulting firm to its employees.USF&G said yesterday that it sold its Lowry Associates Inc. at the end of last month to a group of employees headed by the investment company's president and chief executive officer, Michael T. Wilkinson. Lowry, which has 31 employees, monitors and evaluates the performance of 5,000 investment advisers and helps its clients choose among them.

The owner of downtown Baltimore's tallest office building, at 100 Light St., has agreed to an early termination of a lease with USF&G Financial Services Corp. - which has been subleasing to money manager Legg Mason Inc. - in a deal valued at $27 million. As part of the agreement with tower owner Lexington Realty Trust, USF&G, now a subsidiary of St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co., also will transfer ownership of land under the tower valued at $16 million to Lexington, the real estate investment trust said in a news release issued late Monday.

Residents of Mount Washington and officials of USF&G Insurance Co. must do better in trying to accommodate each other during the corporation's expansion of its campus in that community. Both are important to Baltimore.Mount Washington, whose development began in 1854 as a community of summer homes, eventually became the city's first real suburb. As many as 16 trains a day carried commuters from Mount Washington to downtown and back by 1885. The neighborhood today includes some of Baltimore's best citizens.

Norman P. Blake, 49, once picked by Fortune magazine as a coveted U.S. business leader, today was named head of USF&G Corp. He replaces Jack Moseley, 59. The Baltimore-based insurance and financial services company announced Moseley's retirement Nov. 7, along with a $75 million cost-cutting program.Since 1984, Blake has been chairman and chief executive officer of Heller International Corp. of Chicago, a financial services subsidiary of Fuji Bank Ltd., of Tokyo.

How many times can acompany fallBefore it has started to sink?Yes, and how many folks saidit couldn't be saved,And left us along in thedrink?Tell me how many crises didwe overcomeBefore we came back fromthe brink?The answer you'll seeAt USF>he answer's at USF&G/# -- With apologies to Bob Dylan.USF&G Corp. threw a birthday bash in grand fashion yesterday with a marching band, rousing speeches, a 10-foot-high cake and the company chairman, Norman P. Blake Jr., singing on stage with his management team.

The head of USF&G Corp. said a recent study by Public Citizen, a consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, is an effort by the group to bring about federal regulation of the insurance industry."

USF&G Corp., the insurance giant, today eliminated 900 jobs -- 8 percent of its work force -- including 360 at its Baltimore operations.The terminations, which were effective immediately, affect all levels of the corporation, and further reductions are expected, the company said. "It goes from vice presidents to clerical workers," said USF&G spokeswoman Kerrie Burch-DeLuca.The company also said it has cut $28 million in advertising and promotion funds, frozen salaries, put its corporate jet up for sale and eliminated the home-office executive dining room.

USF&G Corp. directors voted yesterday to more than double the amount of common stock the company can repurchase to 11 million shares from 5 million.The Baltimore-based insurer has bought 3.6 million shares since it began purchasing its stock in April.The move reflects USF&G's belief that the once troubled insurer's franchise will increase in value over the next several years, the company said."We believe that USF&G's stock represents a highly attractive investment opportunity for us," said Norman P. Blake Jr., chairman and chief executive of the $14.4 billion-asset property, casualty and life insurance company.

Russell E. Denbow, a longtime attorney in Baltimore, died Friday of dementia and related ailments in the VanDuyn Home in Syracuse, N.Y. The Fayetteville, N.Y., resident was 86. He worked for 30 years as a lawyer for USF&G, a Baltimore insurance company, until he retired in 1985. Born in Woodsfield, Ohio, he served with the Army in Europe between 1942 and 1945. He graduated from Ohio University and received a law degree from Cornell University. He wed Betty Jean Baker in 1952. They lived in Lutherville and later in Cockeysville.

J. Harry Cross Sr., retired general legal counsel for United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. and an avid book collector, died of heart failure Monday at his Homeland residence. He was 97. Mr. Cross was born in Baltimore and raised on Guilford Avenue. He was a 1924 graduate of City College and earned a law degree in 1929 from the University of Baltimore Law School. Mr. Cross retired in 1972 from USF&G, where he began his career 50 years earlier as an office boy. He remained active in the American Bar Association and the Baltimore City Bar Association.

W. Marshall Batson, a retired United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. executive, died Thursday of complications from Parkinson's disease at Beaverbrook Corner Assisted Living in Columbia. The Ellicott City resident was 74. Mr. Batson was born and raised in Greenville, S.C., and earned a degree in business and philosophy from Furman University there in 1951. He worked for Liberty Life Insurance Co. in Greenville until joining USF&G in Baltimore in 1967. He was head of the group insurance department at his retirement in 1991.

In its heyday, USF&G Corp. was one of Baltimore's highest-profile companies - an insurer with an Inner Harbor high-rise to hold its thousands of local employees. Reorganized after tough times, its city staff had dropped to 2,800 by the time The St. Paul Cos. bought it six years ago. Now, just 700 work here - and further cuts loom. Newly merged, The St. Paul Travelers Cos. said this week it is planning to save $300 million by eliminating jobs, consolidating offices and trimming other expenses.

The historic USF&G Corp. building, once destined for demolition, will show off an extreme makeover Thursday as downtown Baltimore's newest hotel -- a Hampton Inn & Suites. The $22 million transformation of the 1906 building at Calvert and Redwood streets has been in progress for about three years. "Our concept was to take the historic building and restore the historic areas, and everywhere else to make sure that the customer had all the modern amenities that could be afforded into a hotel," said Rick Diehl, one of the principals of Baltimore-based Focus Development LLC, which developed the hotel.

In a major expansion plan, the Johns Hopkins University has signed a letter of intent to buy the sprawling St. Paul Cos. campus that straddles the city-county line in Mount Washington. Already a major property owner and the city's largest private employer with 35,000 people, Hopkins expects to keep growing. Assuming the deal is completed, Hopkins plans eventually to use just under half of the space in five major buildings on the 68-acre campus for administrative offices for the school and the hospital, a Hopkins official said yesterday.

USF&G Corp., less than two weeks after announcing it was suspending most of its business in Texas, said yesterday that it also would stop selling property and casualty insurance in Louisiana.The Baltimore-based insurance giant said the decision was part of a continuing attempt to leave unprofitable markets and retool basic operations in the wake of a $610 million loss during last year's fourth quarter.USF&G's property and casualty operations lost $325 million in Louisiana during the last 10 years, the company said.

Jack Moseley, a native of Alabama who became a major Baltimore booster while serving as chairman of USF&G Corp., died Friday of cancer at Flowers Hospital in Dothan, Ala. He was 71 and had lived for the past five years in Fort Gaines, Ga. Mr. Moseley's causes included the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Museum of Art, local public broadcasting, the Colts, the Orioles, the Center Club, and the state and national Republican Party, according to...

The St. Paul Cos. Inc. said yesterday it will attempt to sell its 68-acre Mount Washington campus, where 2,700 people once worked when it was the corporate home of USF&G Corp. Officials for the insurance company said the sale was necessary because the property is too big for the 750 employees now working there, but they stressed yesterday that workers will not be moved out of the area. "It's really important that this not be [viewed] as yet another company leaving the city," said John MacColl, the Baltimore-based vice chairman of St. Paul.