What's In Your Wallet? Capital One Decked After-Hours

Oh boy, the faux vikings and Alec Baldwin are not going to be happy about this. Shares of Capital One

are down almost 5% in the after-hours session after the credit card issuer reported a 42% plunge in fourth-quarter profit, citing rising expenses and more provisions for bad loans as two reasons for the glum report. For the quarter, Capital One earned $407 million, or 88 cents a share, down from $697 million, or $1.52 a share, a year earlier. Revenue slipped 2.5% to $4.1 billion, but loans rose 7.9% to $136 billion. The company said it expects its acquisition of ING's

U.S. online banking business to close in the current quarter and its purchase of HSBC's

U.S. credit card business to close next quarter. "In 2011, we made significant investments to restart growth across our lending businesses after a long period of cyclical declines in loan volumes, and we're seeing these investments gain traction," said Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement. "The strong underlying performance of our businesses and the compelling financial and strategic value of our planned acquisitions put us in a position to deliver and sustain shareholder value through growth potential, strong returns, and strong capital generation." The company's estimated Tier 1 common equity ratio decreased 30 basis points from September 30, 2011, to 9.7 percent as of December 31, 2011, driven by strong loan growth at the end of the fourth quarter. The Tier 1 common equity ratio increased 90 basis points from last year's rate of 8.8 percent at December 31, 2010. Using known Basel III definitions, our Tier 1 common equity ratio would have been approximately 10 basis points higher at December 31, 2011, or 9.8 percent, according to the statement.