The World’s 50 Biggest Banks based on Assets

The 50 biggest banks in the world based on total assets was recently compiled by Global Finance magazine. The number of banks with more than $1 Trillion in assets grew to just 25 from 24 due to the credit crunch last year.

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Source: Global Finance

The total assets of Citibank (C) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) dropped by the end of 2008. Assets of Lloyds Banking Group (LYG), Wells Fargo (WFC) and JPM Morgan Chase (JPM) grew due to acquisitions.

European banks and especially British banks dominate the top 10 rankings. None of the Latin American banks made it to this list. The growing power of Chinese banks is evident from the appearance of four Chinese banks in the above table as opposed to just one last year.

Related: The World’s Biggest Banks by Assets Held

Comments

[Chinese Foo...:]

No Latin American banks? Well, they have the Olympics in 2016.

Oct 07 08:38 AM

[Anthony Har...:]

With great size comes great responsibility. JPM is now one of the biggest banks in the US and surprisingly also managed to be among the favorites with the US government and the Fed. But JPM fails to recognize its responsibility. The large level of risk it has exposed itself to only endangers its position as the No. 1 bank in the US. Taking a hint from the OCC report our team at boombustblog.com conducted a research on the health of derivatives of one of the biggest players in the market – JP Morgan. Considering JPM’s gross market exposure, its value of gross derivative receivables (at fair value) stood at $1.8 trillion as of 2Q09 (almost 19 times its tangible equity), while fair value of gross derivative payables stood at $1.7 trillion. Now since accounting standards allow banks to net offsetting contracts under FIN 39, net fair value appearing in JPM’s balance sheet stood at $164.7 billion or 1.74 times its shareholders’ equity. This implies that JPM has swapped a net $1.6 trillion of market risk for $1.6 trillion of counterparty risk. Even if one is legally allowed to account for this netting via GAAP and FASB standard accounting principles, a realistic, granular look at the quality of their net exposure should cause a shudder. Of the total derivative receivables exposure, 35.4% were rated BBB (the threshold for junk ratings) and below which is enough to wipe off 23.6% of the bank’s tangible equity in the event things move significantly south. This is an exposure that a large bank like JPM (and by extension the US and its taxpayers) can’t afford to assume under the current tilting market conditions. Can JPM’s operations truly justify the capital needed to prudently sustain the risk that they take? The quality of JPM’s derivative exposure is even worse than Bear Stearns and Lehman‘s derivative portfolio just prior to their fall. Total net derivative exposure rated BBB and below for JPMorgan currently stands at 35.4% while the same stood at 17.0% for Bear Stearns (February 2008) and 9.2% for Lehman (May 2008). We all know what happened to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers!!
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Oct 14 09:25 AM