Angry Shareholders Urge Sale of Baltimore BancorpBank
What Baltimore Bancorp officials predicted would be a routine annual meeting yesterday turned into a donnybrook, with hundreds of angry shareholders packed into a conference room jeering the bank's management and demanding that directors negotiate the sale of the bank to a competitor.</br></br>The crowd, which overflowed into the halls of the Omni Hotel, repeatedly booed bank Chairman Harry L. Robinson's statements that the bank, the fourth-largest in Maryland, was not for sale. However, the storm of criticism did not dissuade the bank's directors from voting later to reject a $270 million takeover offer by First Maryland Bancorp, parent company of the First National Bank of Maryland.</br></br>Robinson, who apologized for picking a small room-the overflow crowd was unexpected, he said-refused to discuss the takeover offer with the shareholders because, he said, the board had not yet considered the offer.</br></br>But despite hearing dozens of complaints and even one call for his ouster, Robinson said afterward that shareholders "support management and its decisions."</br></br>Robinson said the board rebuffed the unsolicited bid because the $17 per share price was inadequate. Furthermore, he said, agreement on a price will never be reached because negotiations would require opening the bank's books to a competitor.