SBA Lending Spikes in December

With incentives to lend and borrow about to expire, Wisconsin banks advanced $190 million in federally guaranteed Small Business Administration loans in December, by far the largest monthly total in at least five years. The money was packaged in 337 separate loans, also a high number for a month. Read more in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Revolving Loan Funds Can Help

SBA Recognizes Sheboygan Bank

SBA Lending Double from Year Ago

Wisconsin to Get $21M in New Lending Initiative

U.S. Senate Passes Small Business Bill

The Senate passed legislation that aims to increase lending to small businesses and provide them with $12 billion in targeted tax breaks. The House passed a different version of the legislation in June, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her chamber would quickly approve the Senate version in order to get the bill to President Barack Obama as soon as possible. Read more in the Business Journal of Milwaukee.

SBA Lending Down 29 Percent from ’09

The SBA approved $9.1 million in loans in Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Washington and Waukesha counties in August 2010, down 29 percent from the $12.7 million approved in August 2009. In late spring, the SBA ran out of money for a popular stimulus program that eliminated some loan fees and increased guarantees from 75 percent to 90 percent for most SBA loans, the Business Journal of Milwaukee noted.

Column: Reform Bill Hurts Business Lending

“If small business is the foundation of our economy and community banks are the cornerstones to needed loans, one could formulate that fewer small business loans will be made and result in slower future economic growth” as a result of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill, writes Mike Stoetzel, a partner at Clifton Gunderson and the company’s financial institutions practice leader for Wisconsin, in the Small Business Times.

Entrepreneur Hits SBA Loan Snags

Todd Troha of Kenosha spent a year trying to get an SBA loan for a new day care center. “His market study, his presentation, his track record as a business owner, none of it seemed to matter,” according to a story in the Kenosha News. Eventually, He he got a regular, non-SBA bank loan for $1.2 million, and poured $1.4 million of his own money into the project, and the center is up and about to open. Read more in the Kenosha News.

Fed: Banks Ease Small Biz Lending

In a new survey of nationwide bank lending practices, the Federal Reserve found that the country’s largest domestic banks have eased lending standards for small businesses for the first time in nearly four years. Read the Associated Press article in the Wisconsin State Journal.