Annualized loan growth for the fourth quarter Birmingham was 24%. Number two was Nashville, they had about, they had $47 million of loan growth and a large percentage increase for them that they are getting traction in the Nashville market and doing very-very well. In addition we had good loan growth in Mobile, Pensacola and Montgomery, Alabama. So those were good markets for us for the quarter.
Also I will mention that we mentioned, it’s in the press release of course that the Metro Bank merger in Atlanta is on track to close end of this month. We also plan to add new bankers in Atlanta this year. They are in the process of closing, Metro was closing their office in Charleston, we will apply for permission with the Georgia Banking Department to close their office and hopefully before, it will happen before we have the merger become effective.
We also announced in the quarter that we’d entered the Charleston, South Carolina market. We have as of this morning four banker there in Charleston. We are excited about potential in South Carolina. Again we are an organic growth story that is the reason we’ve bought a bank in Atlanta is because we could not find a team in Atlanta and Tim Barber is a fine banker and a fine person and a good friend that we have known for many years and feel very comfortable with. And we intend to stick to our organic growth opportunities. We think there are many opportunities for us. We are talking to two different teams today in two new markets; they are in the South East, but not in the South West. Again we plan to stick to what we said in non-deal roadshow and that’s the best to continue the organic growth story.
We would certainly not buy a bank that can’t grow faster than we can, so that rules out most of the banks that are for sale. We don’t think that our core competency is buying banks and doing financial engineering to boost earnings per share. We think the best value for our shareholders is best to growth organically and we intend to do that.
We were asked last quarter how many new bankers we’d added in the quarter, and I think I fumbled around the question. And we added 13 new commercial and private bankers for a total of 91. It probably should be 90 because my rain making is down to a mere shower every now and then these days. But that excludes mortgage bankers of course too; mortgage bankers are in a separate category.
The asset quality continues to improve as we’ve noted in the press release. We feel comfortable about where we are there. We plan to grow. We have plans to have 14 FTUs in South Carolina by year end for those of you asking. It will be just like any other region that we have cranked up. They typically, they all follow pretty much the same script amazingly. They have all gone about the same. Some a little faster than others, some we’ve had them get to breakeven as quickly as six months and we’ve had them get to breakeven in 18 months. And so somewhere between that’s usually the case and we ramp up a region and they will [inaudible] fair amount of money per month. So we think we can manage through with that. I am going to turn it over to Bud to cover a few things on the numbers.
