BancorpSouth, Inc. (NYSE: BXS) is a bank holding company headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi. As of 2010 Quarter 1, the company has over $13 billion in total assets^[1] and generates almost 70% of its total revenues through loan interest.^[2] As of 2010 Q1, over three quarters of BancorpSouth's revenue-driving loan portfolio is composed of one-to-four family and other real estate loans.^[3]

BancorpSouth maintains a more conservative lending strategy than its peers by lending only to already-established businesses with good capital strength and by requiring especially strong collateral to secure all loans.^[4] While this conservative approach means BXS forgoes the funding of some higher-yielding loans, it caused the company's percentage of net loan charge-offs to continuously decline each year from 0.41% in 2002 to 0.14% 2007.^[5][6] Throughout 2008, however, increased loan defaults made this percentage spike up to 0.45% in Quarter 3 2008^[7] - more than triple the percentage for Quarter 3 2007^[7] - and annualized net charge-offs steadily rose to 0.76% by 2009.^[8] Although many banks have accepted TARP funding from the United States Treasury,^[9] BXS has decided not to receive TARP funds in spite of its consistently increasing percentage of net charge-offs and decreasing net income.^[10] Banks that did accept TARP funds saw much higher net charge-off rates than BXS; for example, Bank of America's net charge-offs to average loans climbed to 2.36% in 2008 Quarter 4.^[11]

(Read more at Wikinvest )