Huntington reports $312M in income

Staff report

Huntington Bancshares Inc. announced Thursday it closed 2010 on a profitable note after paying off its $1.4 billion federal loan through the Troubled Asset Relief Program in December.

Huntington, headquartered in Columbus and with banks and branches in Mahoning, Columbiana, Trumbull, Lawrence and Mercer counties, reported $312 million in net income for the year, even with the payoff of the TARP loan it received in 2008 along with several other banks affected by the fallout on Wall Street.

Todd Beekman, assistant director of investor relations, said the bank did not have a time frame in 2008 for when it planned to have the TARP loan paid off.

Frank Hierro, Huntington president, said the fourth quarter of 2010 and the year as a whole were outstanding for the bank.

“We are in a position where we continue to grow. ... We’ve been able to position the bank to grow in the communities we do business with,” Hierro said, adding that investors did not predict for the bank to have a profitable year until this year.

“We attribute that to a number of things,” Hierro said. “We were aggressive and early in addressing credit issues, credit concerns and problems as opposed to sitting and waiting for things to unfold.”

Huntington rolled out Fair Play Banking in 2010, which allows retail customers a 24-hour grace period to make a deposit to cure an overdraft and avoid overdraft charges.

Hierro said the bank still was able to make a profit despite a decrease in overdraft fees because it has maintained a higher percentage of customers while still bringing in more accounts.

The bank last year also hired 1,500 new employees, including 15 bankers in their five-county service area.

“It’s not the common approach,” Hierro said of the hires. “Most cut expenses and people as a means of getting to profitability. Our commitment is to the Midwest, the communities we do business in, and to bring value to our customers we have to have colleagues in place.”

Fourth-quarter earnings increased to $122.9 million in net income, which was up 22 percent from its third-quarter net income of $100.9 million.

For full-year 2010, Huntington reported net income of $312.3 million, or $0.19 per common share.