Alex. Brown is back in business

Founded by a Baltimore merchant banker who was a member of a wealthy East Coast trading dynasty -- a junior contemporary of Philadelphia's Stephen Girard -- Alex. Brown called itself the nation's oldest investment bank, and was among the firms taking dot.com companies public, before it was bought by the former Bankers Trust Corp. for $1.7 billion in 1997. Deutsche bought BT in 1999 and later dropped the Brown name until RayJay brought it back.