One of every six Wisconsin banks had a net loss during the second quarter, according to a report by federal regulators, for a combined loss of $111 million as of June 30.

That's better than nearly one of every five banks that ended the 2009 second quarter in the red, with a combined loss of $175 million.

Jim Johannes, UW-Madison School of Business professor and director of the Puelicher Center for Banking Education, said while it's hard to generalize, many of the banks wrote off a lot of their bad loans last year, so this year's statements look better.

Another factor, he said, is the wave of refinancing due to low interest rates. "When you refinance those mortgages, you make fee income from the refinancing and from selling (the mortgages) into the secondary markets," Johannes said.

AnchorBank, Madison, with the second highest net loss among Wisconsin banks a year ago, at $59.3 million, dropped to the fourth biggest net loss in the most recent quarter, at $6.8 million.

But two other local banks did not fare so well.

Evergreen State Bank, Stoughton, reported a net loss of $12 million for the 2010 second quarter, the third highest loss of Wisconsin banks for that period and wider than Evergreen's $2.7 million loss as of June 30, 2009.

Cambridge State Bank, Cambridge, had a $1.6 million net loss for the most recent quarter compared to a $182,000 profit for the 2009 second quarter.

Both of the banks are under consent orders, issued in January by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to fix problems, such as reducing bad loans.

Johnson Bank, Racine, was the most profitable of Wisconsin's regular financial institutions, with a second-quarter profit of $4.9 million, followed by Tri City National Bank, Oak Creek, with $4.2 million in earnings and National Exchange Bank and Trust, Fond du Lac, with profits of $3.6 million.

Madison-based FPC Financial, a federal savings bank that handles Deere & Co.'s revolving credit lines, had the highest profit for the quarter, with $13.3 million.

Marshall and Ilsley (M&I) Bank, Milwaukee, the biggest Wisconsin-based financial institution with $47.5 billion in assets, had the biggest net loss, at $126.1 million for the 2010 second quarter, down from its loss of $211.4 million for the year-ago period.