Business

SharpRank, a Timonium company that evaluates sports betting experts, has raised $2.5 million so far in a seed round. The company plans to use the funding to continue to enhance its data science and technical infrastructure, along with testing how its product meets current market demand. SharpRank began raising money on March 4, and is still in talks with additional investors, which may oversubscribe the round.

Employees at Apple’s store in Towson Town Center have launched a drive to unionize, becoming one of just three Apple store locations and the first in Maryland to announce organizing efforts. The Apple workers there have formed the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees with the backing of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the machinists union said.

It was a little under a year into the pandemic when Julia Clouser, then a part-time employee in the Maryland Institute College of Arts’ Graduate Research Lab, traveled to Utah with her family over Christmas break. “It was one of those COVID vacations where you rent an Airbnb house and don’t leave,” she recalled. Clouser, who is now a graduate admissions counselor at MICA, wanted to isolate for 14 days following her trip in order to protect the lab’s other two employees and the students who picked up equipment and prints from the lab.

People who buy their own health insurance in Maryland may find again that they must pay more next year, likely due to costs from the coronavirus pandemic. The three carriers offering policies on Maryland’s health exchange or directly to consumers under the Affordable Care Act requested rate increases from state insurance regulators averaging 11%.

The Greater Baltimore Committee plans to hire a “public safety advocate” who will track crime statistics, monitor data on prosecutions, and make monthly reports on violent crime in the area. Chair Calvin Butler, a top executive at Exelon, made the announcement Wednesday night at the Greater Baltimore Committee’s annual meeting of regional business, civic and nonprofit leaders at the Renaissance Hotel in Baltimore.

Baltimore Medical System (BMS), the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) system in Maryland, Wednesday announced it was awarded significant grants from two prominent foundations to support the development of its newest community health center in Baltimore. The France-Merrick Foundation has awarded $250,000 and The Middendorf Foundation has awarded $100,000 for the construction of BMS at Yard 56 – a modern, state-of-the art community health center currently being developed on Eastern Avenue in Greektown.

Glass Jacobson PA, an accounting firm that has slowly expanded over the years in Montgomery County, has ended a two-year search for a merger partner with a deal to sell to a regional Virginia firm that President Edward J. Jacobson called a mirror image of his firm. “This is us but a bigger version of us,” Jacobson said Tuesday in disclosing the deal to sell to Winchester, Virginia-based Yount, Hyde & Barber or YHB. The deal, which involves Glass Jacobson’s partners selling their equity stake to YHB, is expected to close July 1. The firm’s six principals and 54 employees will stay on but the name will go away.

Yount, Hyde and Barbour (YHB) will acquire Glass Jacobson, PA, a Maryland-based tax, accounting, and management consulting firm, the company announced Wednesday. The takeover will become official July 1. Glass Jacobson was established in 1962 with a rich history of serving clients throughout the Baltimore-Washington metro area.