Report: Big banks show strong support for small businesses

The financial services industry extended $607 billion in loans to small businesses during the first half of 2011, just $45 billion less than the loans they held for all of 2010, according to a new report from the Financial Services Roundtable, a group representing 100 of the largest banking and services companies in the United States.

The report, scheduled to be released Tuesday, arrives just three days after activists organized an anti-corporate bank movement throughout the country and one day ahead of a Federal Reserve conference focused on small business and entrepreneurship during the economic recovery.