Business

A veteran local marketing executive has jumped from The Sun to the rival Baltimore Banner to help the nonprofit news startup grow its advertising sales and events next year. Sharon Nevins started as the Banner’s chief revenue officer last week and will help expand its advertising and marketing staff beginning in January. She recently left her post as vice president for advertising at The Sun and is the latest in a stream of Sun journalists and editors to migrate to the online startup Banner, which launched five months ago as a nonprofit news source covering the city. Nevins said Monday that her advertising and marketing team at the Banner will focus on boosting online ad sales as well as plan and hold Banner-sponsored events in Greater Baltimore next year.

Lorton defense contractor QinetiQ U.S. said Wednesday it has closed its deal to buy Ashburn cybersecurity contractor Avantus Federal from Pennsylvania private equity firm NewSpring Holdings for $590 million. QinetiQ U.S., a subsidiary of the U.K. defense tech company QinetiQ Group PLC, specializes in robotics and autonomous vehicles. It said the deal “creates a unique platform to offer comprehensive mission-led innovation for the most sensitive and complex challenges intelligence, defense, homeland, civilian, and other government customers face today.”

A local aircraft engine manufacturer has raised a $3.5 million round and now plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Baltimore. North American Wave Engine Corp. plans to build a 7,500-square-foot facility at the Baltimore Heliport on the Canton Waterfront to develop and manufacture engines and aircraft.

Baltimore nanotechnology company Pixelligent has raised $38 million to help fund the commercialization of its technology to help improve augmented reality headsets and displays. The money comes through a funding vehicle managed by MVolution Partners. The funding vehicle is akin to a loan backed by the value of Pixelligent’s patents. Aon, a financial services company, evaluated the value of the Baltimore company’s intellectual property to facilitate the loan. The loan enables Pixelligent to gain capital without needing to dilute control of the company by giving up more equity.

With studies showing that at least three-quarters of online shoppers check product and service reviews before they buy, the evaluations have become more important than ever in global commerce. But fake reviews upend the system. In the United States, state attorneys general and a key federal agency are leading efforts to crack down on false or manipulated reviews that can lead to purchases of shoddy products or services and sometimes leave little recourse for consumers. Still, efforts to address the problem pale in comparison to the number of fake reviews and the economic damage they cause, according to recent studies from the Center for Data Innovation and the World Economic Forum.

A lawyer for Louis Angelos, who has sued his mother and brother over control of the Orioles, the law firm and other assets of his father Peter Angelos, says the attorney appointed to represent the incapacitated family patriarch should be disqualified because of conflicts of interest. Benjamin Rosenberg, who represents Peter Angelos, has “an extreme and uncontrolled animus” toward his own client’s law firm, according to a letter Louis Angelos’ attorney wrote to the judge in the case. Louis Angelos has been running the law firm in the several years since his father has been incapacitated by illness.

Rose Prophete thought the second mortgage loan on her Brooklyn home was resolved about a decade ago — until she received paperwork claiming she owed more than $130,000. “I was shocked,” said Prophete, who refinanced her two-family home in 2006, six years after arriving from Haiti. “I don’t even know these people because they never contacted me. They never called me.” Prophete is part of a wave of homeowners who say they were blindsided by the start of foreclosure actions on their homes over second loans that were taken out more than a decade ago. The trusts and mortgage loan servicers behind the actions say the loans were defaulted on years ago. Some of these homeowners say they weren’t even aware they had a second mortgage because of confusing loan structures. Others believed their second loans were rolled in with their first mortgage payments or forgiven.

Northeast Maglev, a Baltimore-based company focused on bringing the world’s fastest train to the Northeast corridor, recently launched a STEAM afterschool enrichment program. Designed by former educators, students learn through hands-on experimentation about the science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics principles that make the SCMAGLEV train operate. Northeast Maglev teamed up with Restoring Inner-City Hope (RICH) to launch the program, hosting third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students at the RICH headquarters in the south Baltimore neighborhood of Cherry Hill. The event was part of Northeast Maglev’s celebration of National Education Month, which is observed every November.