Whitney Holding Corp. in New Orleans said Tuesday that its first-quarter net income rose 2.5% from a year earlier, to $37 million.
The $10.6 billion-asset Whitney said average total loans increased 9%, to $7.3 billion, from a year earlier.
It attributed the loan increase largely to its March 2 acquisition of the $269 million-asset Signature Financial Holdings Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Despite adding more than $220 million of deposits by acquiring Signature, Whitney's deposits fell 4%, to $8.5 billion, from the year-earlier period.
Whitney said it had expected the drop because of the deployment of deposits it had accumulated from insurance payments to victims of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.
Whitney's stock was trading at $30.28 a share late Tuesday, down 0.56%.
