Largest banks by country
A - G | H - N | O - U | V - Z
Methodology
Euromoney's latest survey of the biggest banks shows how fortunes have changed since 1990. Then, Japanese banks took six of the top 10 slots: Fuji Bank (shareholders' equity $11,041 million) and Dai-Ichi Kangyo (equity $10,962.37 million) were the two biggest and six others from Japan made the top 20. The biggest of the eight European banks in the top 20 was French (Crédit Agricole - equity $10,901 million) which that year took the third place occupied previously by Citicorp, which had dropped to seventh.
The best performers that year in terms of equity
growth were Koreans, Taiwanese and some US super-regionals. US money centre banks were sliding down the rankings as shareholders demanded higher equity returns.Against this background it was noted that the most worrying aspect of that year's table was that average return on equity had fallen from 11.64% in 1988 to 9.12% in 1989 and return on assets was a meagre 0.58%, reflecting "the world-wide problems of competition - squeezed margins and increased write-offs".Disintermediation has continued to hit margins on bank lending. For the top 250 in this year's survey, the average ROE is 8.1%,