Banks move to take advantage of freedom - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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To start with, has a growinhg family of mutual funds. Its ARK funds have expandef by six, due to the conversion of its last commojntrust funds. These trust funds were an old way of doingvbusiness -- pooling funds from among a groupo of well-heeled investors or institutions. But, unlikre mutual funds, they are not priced daily in the Moreover, they were not as easily And banks are competing with other financiall serviceorganizations -- such as mutual fund families -- for the investment dollar.
So banks like First National continue to add to their portfolio of products available to the average The bank's mutual funds were createdx about three years ago "to take advantage of the investmentf expertise that existed and then be able to bring it to a broade variety of clients," said Michelr Dalton, vice president and productf manager for the ARK funds. The newest productsa expand the bank's mutual fund roster to 17 and raiser their value by about 15 percentto $2.98 The new funds are splift evenly between equity and fixed They include the Maryland Tax-Free and Pennsylvania Tax-Frere funds, which will be generally available in the first quartert of 1997.
Mid-Cap Equituy and Equity Income will be availablwe laterin 1997. The funds are managedc by Baltimore-based Allied Investmenyt Advisors Inc., a subsidiary of First National. First National is a subsidiaryu of FirstMaryland Bancorp. The crumbliny of the walls preventinvg banks from offering various investmenft products has accompanied the fall of the wallz prohibitinginterstate expansion. And so Taneytown Bank & Trust Co. has invadexd Gettysburg, Pa. Based close to the Pennsylvania and with many customers who live inthat state, the bank has long droolef over the prospect of tapping into that territory.
Taneytown has been planningv its marchsince 1995, when rule changeds allowed banks to cross state lines. This week, it openede a business development office, modelecd on its Howard County branch. Althougb it will be full-service, the branch will have no tellers and will concentrateon "business according to Frank Neubauer, president. This will be Taneytown' 11th branch, adding to ones located in Howard andBaltimore counties. It is the fourtyh branch to openin 1996. Neubauer said this move completeds currentexpansion plans, at least for now. He added, that once the new branches become officialswill "begin looking at other locations" probablgy around the end of 1997. Alex.
Brow is on the move. The Baltimore-based investmenty firm is in the process of leaving an East Baltimorse Street building it has inhabitexd for92 years, as well as other nearby offices. It is not movingb far -- merely consolidating in new digs down the blockj at 1South St. Beginning with its researchn division, which settled in Nov. 25, the firm intendas to shift most ofits 1,000-plus Baltimorer employees -- division by division -- to the 30-stor Commerce Place building by March 3. With locationsd at 22 offices around the the 196-year-old firm has about 2,50o employees overall. Alex. Brown is leaving, among othert locations, 135 E. Baltimore, where it has been doing businessasince 1904.
By contrast, its new building, where the firm will occupyu about 50 percent ofthe space, was built in 1991.