Maryland Business

The Rocket Man will make his appearance Saturday at 1st Mariner Arena for a jukebox performance of all his greatest hits. Tickets range from $29 to $149, which isn’t so bad, considering that it’s Elton John.

AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Silver Spring is having a retrospective on Alfred Hitchcock, for all you film buffs. It ends March 31 and costs between $7 and $11. So catch it soon.

And while I’m on a roll with morbid things, Zombie Nation at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum will be laid to rest (get it?) after this weekend, ending on Sunday.

The exhibit has zombie versions of your favorite pop culture icons. Dress as a zombie and you’ll get a discount on admission.

Enjoy the weekend!

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The Baltimore Blast are headed to the Major Indoor Soccer League championships this year for the sixth time in nine years.

To celebrate, the Blast are throwing a party downtown on Thursday so visitors and those on their lunch break can mingle with the players and join in. The celebration will be at noon at Hopkins Plaza on Charles and Baltimore streets. There will be music, free food and Blast paraphernalia, as well as the chance to win tickets to the championship game.

As for the game itself, Baltimore will play against the Milwaukee Wave at First Mariner Arena on Friday. The game will be at 7:35 p.m. and tickets range from $16 to $30.

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Maryland lost two community banks last year, and if Paul Joegriner’s predictions are right, the state will lose another two in 2010.

A former CEO of American Partners Bank(now called Waterfield Bank), Joegriner was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article in November highlighting people living off their severance packages while they looked for work.

Joegriner had been out of work since March 2008 and was quickly running through his $200,000 severance and family savings while he turned away jobs that paid less than his old position.

Now, it seems Joegriner has accepted a position with BankIntel, a banking think tank, which is launching a quarterly publication, Mid-Atlantic Banking Journal. (I couldn’t find any trace of the organization or the pub when I did a Web search, aside from info on Joegriner’s LinkedIn profile. I tried to reach Joegriner but didn’t hear back from him immediately).

Regardless, Joegriner is an industry veteran who also was a vice president at Chevy Chase Bank.  In an update he sent Friday on the state of the banking industry in Maryland based on second and third quarter data, here’s what he found:

The state of Maryland banks has seen a slow and steady decline. Between September 2008 and September 2009, Maryland banks had a 284% decrease in net income from a positive $60 million to a negative $109 million. If the tea leaves are correct, Maryland will lose at least 2 more banks in 2010. The regulatory agencies are under pressure to take action and clean up.

He pointed to declining deposits at local banks and declining loans and leases, which stemmed from increasing charge-offs for unpaid loans.

He explained that the Texas Ratio — a measure of a bank’s credit troubles — for all Maryland banks grew to 44 percent at the end of September 2009 compared to 29 percent the year before.

A measurement of 100 percent or more means banks might not be able to cover losses related to bad loans on their books.

Last year, nine banks received enforcement actions from federal regulators urging them to raise capital, get rid of problem loans and improve bank operations. He points to K Bank, Sykesville FSB and Eastern Savings Bank as those on the brink. He’s also got his eye on First Mariner Bank, Colombo Bank, Waterfield Bank and Ideal Federal Savings Bank.

We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled too.

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A week ago, I was going through my morning routine, which includes, most mornings, listening to WYPR, the local NPR affiliate, before I head to work. One of the station’s regular features is the “Morning Economic Report,” hosted by local economist Anirban Basu, who heads the local think-tank the Sage Policy Group Inc. In Basu’s minute-long segments, he tends to focus on one part of the economy — housing, banking, public finance — and provide very quick, but usually very expert analysis of data. It’s not quite investment advice, but it’s the kind of thing that a businessperson, an amateur investor or even just an informed citizen might listen to and get ideas about money, the state of the market, or how things are likely to change and develop in the future.

Last Tuesday, Basu’s segment was about being a rental landlord, and a recent report that showed rising vacancies in rental properties in 79 markets across the country. The point of it was, in the end, that renters have the upper hand in the current market, as far as demanding lower rents and better service, because there simply aren’t enough tenants to fill the space. Baltimore was not mentioned specifically, and the implication was that this is a problem of national scope. The transcript started like this:

Those looking for a new apartment should be aware that renters presently enjoy the negotiating upper hand vis-à-vis landlords. According to vacancy and rental rate data … apartment vacancies hit a 30-year high during last year’s fourth quarter and rents have been falling as landlords compete aggressively to retain existing tenants and attract new ones.  Rents declined 3 percent last year, led by declines in West Coast markets such as San Jose, Seattle and San Francisco; cities that were expanding briskly prior to the recession.  Analysts believe that rental market weakness will last at least through the first half of 2010 and probably beyond …

Here’s the issue: Anirban Basu is, in addition to being a highly respected economist, a rental landlord. He owns five rental properties in Baltimore, a house in Deep Creek and another house in Harrisburg, Pa. Why does this matter? Because he didn’t mention it on the air. He was presented merely as an expert and introduced only in his context as chairman and CEO of the Sage Policy Institute, but the fact is, Basu has a financial interest in the rental housing market, its fluctuations, and questions of business strategy surrounding rental housing investing.

And now’s the time where I disclose that Basu, in addition to all the other things he is, is also frequently quoted in The Daily Record, especially as an expert in our quarterly mergers and acquisitions stories. He also is the lead author on many of the research reports that guide city and state economic policy decisions. This, I admit, is just a fact of life that you have to deal with, being a business reporter in Smalltimore. There are only a handful of economists at local think tanks or academic institutions who cover the local and statewide markets. Richard Clinch of the University of Baltimore and Daraius Irani of Towson’s RESI institute come to mind. And yes, we quote them frequently too.

But WYPR’s lax disclosure rules are a bit troubling. If Basu has a financial interest in something, shouldn’t he mention it when providing expert opinions on the subject? And if the trends he’s reporting are negative, isn’t that all the more reason to ask, Why not? Why shouldn’t he mention it?

Reached by phone last week, Basu said he didn’t see any conflict of interest in the “Morning Economic Report” spots, because they’re very short, and entirely data-based.

“I’m reporting what the data say. I’m working against my own interest, because I’m suggesting that the rental market is weak, and that people can afford to be selective,” he said. “Those are 65-second spots. There is not a lot of opportunity to disclose … I report on the economics of banking, and I sit on the board of First Mariner Bank. I don’t disclose that.”

Well, why the heck not?

We put the question to WYPR’s vice president and program manager, Andy Bienstock, pointing out that Don Fry, who also provides regular commentary for WYPR, always discloses that he is president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, a business booster group, when he speaks on-air. Bienstock responded that in last Tuesday’s report, he agreed that that there was no conflict of interest, that “putting [Basu] into Jim Cramer territory is an enormous stretch,” referring to the CNBC host who was the subject of a scandal related to disclosure issues last year. But he also said that in mentioning the First Mariner issue, we had “buried the lede.”

“I did not know the full extent of his involvement with First Mariner and, if he is speaking directly about the bank we will ask him to disclose, on-air, his role there,” Bienstock wrote in an email. “We are, co-incidentally, working up internal disclosure forms for all our contributors – both commentators and news stringers. With journalists needing to keep there hands in a lot of pots – just to eat, since full time work is so scarce – we need to do a better job of catching any conflicts of interest before they happen. That way we can either disclose on air, or not air the piece to begin with.”

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For a music lover like myself, rising temperatures only mean one thing – it’s time to break out the folding chairs and head to my local outdoor amphitheater for a season of big-name summer concerts.

Unfortunately, many of us find that money is a lot tighter this summer and concert promoters are concerned that this season lawns won’t be quite as packed with fans.

In hopes of avoiding a ticket buying slump, Live Nation Inc., the world’s largest concert promoter, has announced a special summer promotion that allows fans to buy tickets without tacking on the usual fees and surcharges that can really break the bank.

Live Nation will kick-off the promotion on Wednesday by forgoing all ticket fees for amphitheater lawn seats in an online, 24-hour sale. The discount will save fans between $9 and $12 on tickets that generally cost about $25.

According to an AP report, Live Nation plans to continue the promotion, though on a lesser scale, every Wednesday for the rest of the summer. Hopefully, we can all save money this summer while still enjoying our favorite bands under the stars.

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Bentley College economics professor Scott Sumner has a nice post on his blog that starts with some musings on bank architecture, and expounds upon that to arrive at some recommendations for the future of the finance industry.

In a nutshell, he thinks that bank buildings looked great back in the 1920s, leading up to the Great Depression, and that banks failed by the thousands not because of greed, but because branch banking was poorly regulated by state governments, and encouraged the establishment of thousands of independent banks with shaky bases of capital.

Nowadays, he says, bank buildings have none of that old charm, and fittingly, their banking strategies are just as garish and indulgent as their facades. He wishes that banks would be built in a more reasonable, conservative style, and that what goes on inside them would reflect this: Read the rest of this entry »

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If you bank with 1st Mariner, you likely know where to find your local branch and a few others close to your office or home.

But what if you were in an exotic locale like Shrewsbury, Pa., and you needed to deposit a check or get some cash, and you didn’t know where to go?

If you’re hip/lucky enough to own an iPhone, the folks at R2i and PointAbout have developed just the application to help you out of that jam. The free app helps you find 1st Mariner Bank branches and thousands of ATMs nationwide that are “in-network,” based on your location or ZIP code. This aids customers trying to avoid out-of-network ATM fees.

Although it seems pretty straightforward, you can check out the video below to see a demo of how to use the application. To download the freebie, go to iTunes or the app store on your iPhone and type in “mariner.”

DANIELLE ULMAN, Business Writer

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