June 2000
Bank atlas 2000: Banking’s global elite
Consolidation continues to shake up the tables as
restructuring sweeps both developed and developing nations alike. Research by Andrew Newby.
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%, 11% down on the "worrying" 1989 figure. For the Japanese banks ROEs now average minus 13.4% compared with 17.51% for the 42 US firms shown. The US banks are now bigger, more diversified and differentiated than in 1990. Strong growth, deregulation, the increasing irrelevance of Glass-Steagall, a stream of mergers and their own efforts give US banks in this year's top 250 a combined net income of nearly $61 billion. Eight of the top 20 banks in 2000 didn't figure in the same ranking for 1990. Of these, four are US - Bank One, Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo - up from 68th in 1990 to 9th - one is US-Swiss (Credit Suisse), two are Spanish and Sakura is Japanese. The biggest fallers in the past 10 years have been big Japanese and British top banks. Euromoney's 1990 reviewer noted the ominous sharp falls in the net income of Japan's three long-term credit banks, including Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ), which alone of the three has since avoided nationalization. Pre-merger IBJ has fallen 24 places since 1990, when at one point it had the world's largest market cap. NatWest and Barclays have fallen by 23 and 21 places respectively to slots 31 and 26.However of those banks whose equity growth has pushed them furthest up the rankings since last year, six of the 10 highest climbers are Japanese, including Toyo Trust (+39 places), Bank of Fukuoka (+37) and Zenshinren Bank (+28).
More information on bank atlas: the world's largest banks
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