Business

SECU, Maryland’s largest state chartered credit union, marked the opening of a new branch Monday in downtown Baltimore that replaced a location near the University of Maryland Baltimore. The branch, in the lobby of the Pandora building at 250 W. Pratt St., is expected to serve clients in the central business district and offer access to members across the city, credit union officials said.

Economists have been predicting a recession for months, but the labor market has remained resilient, wage growth is higher than before the pandemic, and inflation continues to drop, now at 4% compared to 9.1% in June of last year. Despite this good news, consumers don’t feel confident about the future, according to the consumer confidence index, which is at a six-month low.

Along a flat road in rural Cecil County, where the sky is big and the towns are small, stands a long, nondescript building. Inside is one of the most important cultivation and processing operations for Maryland’s new cash crop — cannabis. SunMed Growers and its 150 employees are harvesting, testing and packaging as many products as they can in preparation for Saturday.

Rising interest rates and ever-looming economic uncertainty may have made venture capital a bit more conservative of late, but the investment arm of defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) said it has no plans on slowing down. Indeed, it’s ramped up quite a bit in the last couple of years, said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures.

The owners of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. will pay $2 million in back rent after the eatery abruptly closed last year in Harborplace’s Light Street pavilion. The payment was detailed this month in settlement filings of a lawsuit by the Harborplace receiver over the national restaurant’s departure and failure to pay rent for more than two years and caps a sometimes bitter 10-year run for the seafood eatery.

Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater on Thursday announced the formation of a work group to examine county law pertaining to data centers and other related issues. Fitzwater also announced that she signed an executive order directing the Department of Planning and Permitting to pause, for nine months, any individual zoning map amendments that would change a landowner’s property to general industrial or limited industrial.

Under Armour Inc. is eliminating approximately 50 corporate positions as the company looks to cut costs and move toward profitability. The Baltimore-based sportswear company confirmed on Thursday that it plans to lay off employees across several areas of the business. The elimination of the positions comes as the company’s new CEO Stephanie Linnartz recently laid out a new plan to return Under Armour (NYSE: UAA) to growth.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will open its first downtown Baltimore branch in August as the banking giant works to have 17 branches up and running in the city and county by the end of the year. Chase will take over a retail space at 100 S. Charles St. that has been vacant since Bank of America closed its branch there nearly two years ago amid a move to new offices in Harbor East. Melvin Collins, Chase’s market director for Baltimore, said the bank will also open a branch in Reisterstown in July, and will add another branch in Pikesville later in the year.