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The Baltimore Sun columnist Jay Hancock blogs about the business world
Jay Hancock
Exelon gets tax cuts despite pledge to locate in Baltimore
February 12, 2012
Among the many advantages Constellation Energy's headquarters gives Baltimore — Fortune 500 cachet, hundreds of well-paid workers, millions in charity — is this: The building pays sticker price on property taxes — $745,000 a year.
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Electric deals often look good — until the contract ends
February 6, 2012
Your first job as a Maryland electricity shopper is to sign up for a good deal at a good price. I'll remind you how to do so later in the column.
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Price funds grant small but exclusive Facebook entree
February 5, 2012
Among the elite insiders who got to invest in Facebook before it goes public were several Silicon Valley venture capitalists, a Russian oligarch and the rock star Bono.
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Holiday spending wasn't as spirited as reported
January 30, 2012
This shouldn't surprise you. The holiday shopping season was not gangbusters after all.
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Obama plan not the biggest factor for U.S. factory revival
January 28, 2012
Lion Brothers is outsourcing again. Unpaid child laborers will design one of the Owings Mills company's newest embroidered emblems.
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New O'Malley wind farm proposal still a long shot
January 23, 2012
In its most important respects, Gov. Martin O'Malley's new proposal to build a wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean isn't different from the old one.
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Queries about Romney's jobs record miss bigger point
January 22, 2012
Did Mitt Romney destroy or create jobs while running Bain Capital?
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After urologists got machine, cancer treatments soared
January 17, 2012
Four years ago, doctors at Chesapeake Urology Associates started ordering the most expensive kind of prostate-cancer therapy for many more of their patients.
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Cohen saved billions, showed health regulation can work
January 17, 2012
Hospitals gouge employers and insurance companies. Combining into powerful alliances, they raise prices almost at will, forcing carriers to pass the costs on to patients and the companies they work for.
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Millennial Media challenges giants in hot mobile-ad trade
January 9, 2012
In 1996 Robert H. Frank published "The Winner-Take-All Society," an explanation of why so few in the wired world do so well and why everybody else falls short. The intervening years have only strengthened his case that, in a networked economy, most sales, profits and other rewards go to a small group of companies and individuals.
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T. Rowe Price fears high-frequency computer trading
January 7, 2012
Along with Europe's financial crisis, Middle East unrest and sluggish U.S. growth, mutual-fund seller T. Rowe Price has identified a 2012 economic risk you probably haven't thought about.
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In the gambling arms race, Maryland to fall behind again
January 2, 2012
In the contest between marijuana and gambling to gain acceptance by generating new tax revenue, gambling just pulled three reels of cherries.
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What to expect in business and financial news in 2012
December 31, 2011
What the year is likely to bring: Further housing price declines, more federal budget fights, the departure of Baltimore's only Fortune 500 corporate headquarters and computerized electricity meters that many seem to fear will read their minds and give them cancer.
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Holiday layoffs another step back for Sparrows steel mill
December 26, 2011
Speculation about WCI Steel's bankruptcy started circulating early in 2003.
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Plan your end-of-life care or others will do it for you
December 24, 2011
The way Dr. Dan Morhaim describes it, the hardware of prolonging lives is far more advanced than the software.
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Mercantile discipline could make 1st Mariner shipshape
December 23, 2011
The winds of economic destruction blow as hard in Baltimore as anywhere else. But business brainpower tends to stay anchored to the land of pleasant living.
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Work in progress, O'Malley energy policy yields results
December 19, 2011
As a connoisseur of the wide open spaces between what politicians say and what politicians do, I saw promise in Gov. Martin O'Malley years ago.
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Baltimore health deal reveals the future of Medicare
December 17, 2011
If you want to understand a major reason medical costs are out of control, breaking the federal budget and dividing the country, look at the types of people enrolled in XLHealth's Medicare insurance plans.
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Exelon boss wants merger badly, and he's paying for it
December 14, 2011
John Rowe made no secret of the fact that he badly wanted a signature merger to top off his career as the chief executive of Exelon Corp. How badly can be seen in the settlement he just agreed to in Exelon's bid to purchase Baltimore's Constellation Energy.
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'Speed Trap State' new Md. motto, thanks to cameras
December 12, 2011
James F. Hunter never goes more than 5 miles per hour over the speed limit. The Connecticut businessman says he hasn't gotten anything but a parking ticket in three decades.
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Unpaid bills, machine-shop closure mark steel mill stress
December 11, 2011
The answering machine at RG Steel's Sparrows Point plant hasn't been working much better than the accounts payable department or the sales operation.
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Maryland's athletic woes mirror those of the economy
December 5, 2011
Sport, said broadcaster Howard Cosell, is "human life in microcosm." Ain't it the truth at the University of Maryland athletic department, where the economic mood strikes approximately the same chord as that of the unemployment rate and the budget deficit.
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Something's making Maryland millionaires leave
December 4, 2011
Gov. Martin O'Malley's notorious but temporary "millionaire tax" doesn't seem to have prompted rich folks to flee Maryland in much greater numbers than usual, according to the latest data. But that doesn't mean they're not fleeing, and it doesn't mean the tax should be resurrected, as some advocate.
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Consumer revival won't last without a hiring spurt
November 28, 2011
Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve seem to have run out of ammo. It's gridlock as usual for Congress. States and cities are cutting spending and shedding jobs.
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Constellation coal plants face an uncertain future
November 26, 2011
They feel forgotten in the expensive and lengthy proceeding to sell Constellation Energy, Baltimore's last Fortune 500 company, to Chicago-based Exelon.
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Fannie and Freddie don't need Wall Street pay to run
November 21, 2011
Who says Democrats and Republicans can't agree on budget cuts? The supercommittee charged with reducing the deficit by more than $1 trillion by Wednesday seems to have failed.
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Bill Miller's exit marks fresh start for Value Trust fund
November 20, 2011
Bill Miller didn't just make amazing amounts of money for himself, his firm and his clients for a while. He helped fill a hole in Baltimore's financial services industry.
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Customers protest fund switch by Constellation suitor Exelon
August 6, 2011
The dismantling of Exelon Corp.'s Zion Station nuclear power plant near Chicago is setting several remarkable precedents.
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Groupon: Baltimore restaurants hot and cold on deals
June 6, 2011
Has The Prime Rib, which requires waiters to wear tuxes and exudes "the intoxicating aroma of old money," according to Esquire magazine, got a deep discount deal for you.
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City raises stakes, questions in convention race
May 31, 2011
If you want to win an arms race, minor escalation is not the way to go. Only after President Ronald Reagan started developing a wildly expensive and impractical system to shoot down enemy missiles did the Soviet Union give up the Cold War.
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This time, Constellation takeover will go through
May 1, 2011
Sometime around May 2012, you will open your BGE statement and react with mild pleasure, perhaps, on seeing that your bill is reduced by $200 or so.
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Exelon deal bad for Baltimore despite jobs claim
April 28, 2011
Nobody knows better than Mayo Shattuck, the former investment banker, that economic value is determined by future cash flows.
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Stock price may push Shattuck to sell Constellation to Exelon
March 14, 2011
Few things inspire financial journalists, stock analysts and investment bankers like rumors about corporate mergers and acquisitions.
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Owners' actions argue for seizure of horse tracks
December 13, 2010
Eminent domain, which gives government authority to forcibly purchase private property, is a last resort in countries that aren't run by juntas or Politburos.
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Stronach again fails Maryland horse racing
November 30, 2010
The best spin you can give Frank Stronach is that he has good intentions but makes bad deals with inappropriate partners — people who seem more interested in slot-machine riches than in the thoroughbred racing he loves.
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Racing boss stops move to close Laurel Park
November 9, 2010
Delivering surprising if tenuous hope to Maryland's horse-racing industry, track owner Frank Stronach reversed his organization's move to slash thoroughbred meets and end races at Laurel Park next year, saying he hopes to strike a deal with breeders and state officials to save Laurel as well as Baltimore's historic Pimlico Race Course.
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New team for Calvert Cliffs project, but same challenges
October 27, 2010
They can cancel the beret and tricolor-flag orders at the Perryman Power Plant.
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Incentive bonuses taint foreclosures, economy
October 19, 2010
Maryland and most other states outlaw "pay for performance" for political lobbyists for a very good reason.
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Prospects dim for both nuclear energy and Constellation
October 17, 2010
When Constellation Energy Group and EDF Group teamed up three years ago, the economy was riding high, and so were they.
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Constellation's partnership with French company tested
September 18, 2010
Crisis can trash or temper a marriage. We'll soon know which way it goes for Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group and France's EDF Group.
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Constellation's partnership with French company tested
September 18, 2010
Crisis can trash or temper a marriage. We'll soon know which way it goes for Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group and France's EDF Group.
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State should press inquiry into needless stents
June 9, 2010
Doctors at Union Memorial Hospital would never implant unneeded coronary-artery stents the way Dr. Mark Midei is alleged to have done at nearby St. Joseph Medical Center, a spokeswoman says.
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Pension should cushion fall from grace
January 7, 2010
What's the difference between a criminal conviction and "probation before judgment"?
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Hale facing long odds in bailing out 1st Mariner
September 23, 2009
The last time regulators ordered Ed Hale to fix a money-losing bank or have it seized by the government was the early 1990s.
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Slots bid process wipes out hoped-for benefits
February 11, 2009
Legalizing slot machines was supposed to save Maryland horse tracks, help Maryland schools and keep the Preakness in Baltimore. That it might fail on all counts, in a kind of grotesque trifecta, is probably what everybody involved with it deserves.
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Biggest winner in Constellation deal is Buffett
December 18, 2008
"Warren Buffett loses out to the French" was the gist of several headlines yesterday on Electricite de France's deal to invest $4.5 billion in Constellation Energy Group.
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EDF's offer appears to have a shot
December 10, 2008
Electricite de France's proposal to invest $4.5 billion in Constellation Energy Group's nuclear-generation business looks like it has a shot.
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Constellation offer: pot of gold or elusive rainbow?
December 4, 2008
Like the Wizard of Oz, Electricite de France looked into the souls of everybody connected with Constellation Energy Group and offered to grant their greatest desires.
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Point's future is up to Annapolis
March 26, 2008
The global economy has done its part: Russia's OAO Severstal has agreed to buy the Sparrows Point steel mill and invest in badly needed upgrades.
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Ground rent law violates the principles of due process, fair play
December 13, 2006
Because Deloris McNeil missed paying a $96-a-year ground rent bill, she lost the Fayette Street house she had bought for $44,500 and lived in for years. The tiny, delinquent bill morphed into creditor-seizure powers that trumped fair play, common sense and fundamental rights.
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However it's spun, Baltimore is losing a headquarters
December 20, 2005
As sales of key corporate citizens to out-of-town landlords go, the merger of Constellation Energy with FPL Group isn't that bad. So why are they trying to spin us like a dynamo in a heat wave?
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U.S. probes grant to city nonprofit
October 2, 2005
The U.S. Education Department's inspector general is investigating whether a senior official of the agency improperly helped the National Federation of the Blind win a key federal grant around the time she was discussing taking a job at the Baltimore-based nonprofit.
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Big rise in Md. tax revenue is partly credited to home sales
July 31, 2005
WHAT'S BEHIND the surprising spurt in Maryland tax collections and what Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. calculates is a billion-dollar budget surplus?
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Reform goes back to start on nonprofit boondoggle
July 20, 2005
FAITHFUL READERS know about a $2 billion federal boondoggle called the Javits-Wagner- O'Day program, which pays peanuts to disabled people working on no-bid government contracts, enriches nonprofit executives and operates with little oversight or control.
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A warning to charitable donors and a case for tougher disclosure laws on nonprofits
June 19, 2005
RIIIING. IT'S the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon, calling across that state. They want money "to help the blind of the area," according to a fund-raising script from 2003.
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Nonprofits seem in no big hurry to fix their problems
March 2, 2005
The nonprofit-industrial complex knows it has a problem.
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Chimes, other charities are object of badly needed reform
December 5, 2004
FEDERAL authorities have launched a tax probe of Baltimore-based Chimes Inc. and have proposed sweeping governance standards, including executive salary limits, for Chimes and other nonprofit groups that get $2 billion annually from taxpayers to employ the disabled.
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The lights start to flash at end of the blackout
August 20, 2003
IN ECONOMICS there's a heads for every tails, a pull for every push, and the happy reciprocal of the Blackout of 2003 will be the purchase of billions of dollars' worth of electrical transmission hardware.
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Citigroup gets a black eye in Rusnak caper
May 28, 2003
JUST WHEN you thought it was safe to walk down Wall Street again without two Dobermans to repel the white-collar muggers, Allied Irish Banks brings new allegations of misdeeds against Bank of America and Citigroup.
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Bailout pays airlines for years of bad management
September 30, 2001
AS HE pursued his doomed merger with United Airlines earlier this year, US Airways chief executive Rakesh Gangwal said "there is no Plan B" if regulators were to block the deal.
