Business

CFG Bank is undertaking the largest capital raise in its 14-year history to support its growing commercial loan portfolio. CFG, the largest bank headquartered in Greater Baltimore, is currently reaching out to private investors to secure $200 million to $250 million and expects to close the fundraising round by year-end. The bank is growing its reserves because it faces a problem many banks would love to have: too many loan opportunities, many coming from parent company Capital Funding Group Inc.’s national health care clients.

Growing up in South Baltimore, Michael Middleton became accustomed to the invisible barriers separating his neighborhood from the next one over. Those imaginary lines, he recalled, meant that Cherry Hill and Brooklyn neighbors shared little in common besides geography. Now retired, Middleton said something extraordinary has happened to those walls over the last few years. Six South Baltimore communities, wary of development north of the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch, joined forces nearly a decade ago and turned a page.

A Mount Vernon Marketplace vendor will give up its stall at the end of the month but will soon have a space of its own. Fishnet owners Keyia and Ferhat Yalcin are in the final stages of purchasing a building in Baltimore’s Remington neighborhood and plan to open their full-scale restaurant and a new food truck by next summer. The seafood eatery, which started as a restaurant in College Park, used the Mount Vernon market to test out business in Baltimore, Keyia Yalcin said. After around four years in Mount Vernon, Fishnet will own its next spot instead of leasing space for various locations.

JPMorgan Chase and Co. has hired 40 workers for its first virtual call center in Baltimore, a program that allows customer-service employees to work from home.n The 40 workers, who are initially being paid $22.50 per hour, are just the first wave of hires for the virtual call center program, as Chase (NYSE: JPM) officials said there are plans to hire more people in Baltimore. Chase debuted its first virtual call center a year ago in Detroit where the center has 90 workers.

Bethesda’s Eat the Change, Seth Goldman’s 3-year-old healthy drink and snack company, has raised $14 million to expand distribution of its fast-growing Just Ice Tea line and refresh the marketing of its carrot chew snacks. The investment, which closed in mid-October, was powered by existing investors and led by the family of Jeff Swartz, former CEO of Timberland.

I can’t quite remember the moment when smash burgers took over, but business owner Josh Vecchiolla puts it at sometime during the pandemic. “During COVID, smash burgers became this big thing,” said the founder of Fuzzies Burgers, which prepares theirs with crispy edges, a juicy center and “really good melty cheese on top.”

Baltimore will receive up to $1 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies toward a public art project led by Derrick Adams. “Inviting Light” in the Station North arts district in the North Baltimore neighborhoods of Greenmount West, Charles North and Barclay will include light installations and programming at five sites that project safety and respect for residents and local businesses in a community that has suffered from petty crime and neglect, according to a news release.

Being in the top 1% of earners in D.C. requires $161,141 more than it did five years ago. That’s according to data from the Internal Revenue Service, which shows the cutoff for each adjusted gross income by percentile in each state. The data is based on the 2020 tax year and percentiles are based on total tax filers, so they don’t distinguish by marital or household status.