The largest bank that’s based in Wisconsin reports a 600-percent increase in its quarterly profits from a year ago. Associated Bank-Corp of Green Bay had a net income of just under 40-million-dollars from October-through-December. That’s up from six-point-six million in the same quarter of 2010. Earnings per share rose from four-cents to 23. Associated had a big drop in bad loans. Delinquent loans totaled 357-million-dollars in the last year. That’s the lowest in two years, and it was down 38-percent from the year before. The bank also reported a 79-percent decrease in the number of bad loans it wrote off. Associated also said it added a much smaller amount to its reserves for covering bad loans – just one-million dollars in the last quarter, down from 63-million in the final quarter of 2010. C-E-O Philip Flynn expects a three-percent growth in loans in each quarter of 2012. Associated became the largest Wisconsin home-based bank when M-and-I was sold to B-M-O of Canada.
