How banks have grown
The Economist issue we cited yesterday (5/20/06), offers the following chart, based on figures from The Banker magazine.
World' top ten banks ny assets ($ billion)
| Rank |
Bank |
2004 |
Bank |
1995 |
Bank |
1983 |
| 1 |
UBS |
1,553 |
Deutsche Bank |
503 |
Citicorp |
167 |
| 2 |
Citigroup |
1,484 |
Sanwa Bank |
501 |
Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank |
158 |
| 3 |
Mizuho |
1,296 |
Sumitomo Bank |
500 |
Fuji Bank |
142 |
| 4 |
HSBC |
1,277 |
Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank |
499 |
Sumitomo Bank |
136 |
| 5 |
Credit Agricole |
1,243 |
Fuji Bank |
487 |
Mitsubishi Bank |
133 |
| 6 |
BNP Paribas |
1,234 |
Sakura Bank |
478 |
Banque Nationale de Paris |
123 |
| 7 |
JP Morgan Chase |
1,157 |
Mitsubishi Bank |
475 |
Sanwa Bank |
123 |
| 8 |
Deutsche Bank |
1,144 |
Norinchukin Bank |
430 |
Credit Agricole |
123 |
| 9 |
Royal Bank of Scotland |
1,119 |
Credit Agricole |
386 |
BankAmerica |
115 |
| 10 |
Bank of America |
1,110 |
ICBC (China) |
374 |
Credit Lyonnais |
11 |
Reactions:
The world's largest banks in 2004 have assets three times as large as they had in 1995 and around ten times what they had in 1983. What's remarkable is that the mergers, even big ones, keep happening.
While Japanese banks once dominated, they have lost ground to internationally expanding banks from the UK, France, and the US.
The Japanese slippage has come in spite of giant mergers in the last decade.
- Mitsui Financial Group., Daichi Kangyo, Fuji and another bank IBI merged in 1999 to form Mizuho.
- Sumitomo and Sakura merged in 2000 to from the new Sumitomo.
- In 2000, Mitsubishi Bank merged with the Bank of Tokyo to form the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group.
- In 2002, Sanwa merged with two other banks Tokai and Asahi in 2000 to form the UFJ group.
- In 2005, Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group merged with UFJ Holdings, creating a bank with 1.68 trillion in assets, momentarily larger than Citigroup (the merger is not reflected in the chart.)
When banks get this big, they can't be allowed to fail. National economies and, increasingly, the world economy, are dependent on the health of these banks. Governments would find it very hard to allow one of them to fail, however bad the management.
3:46:30 PM 
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