According to The Banker’s rankings, Amsterdam has become continental Europe’s leading financial centre. These are the banks that have witnessed its rise.

Over the past five years Amsterdam has quietly moved up The Banker’s International Financial Centre (IFC) rankings, from 13th in 2011 to sixth in this year’s table. Over the same period Paris and Frankfurt, the most likely beneficiaries of London’s potential exit from the EU single market, have slid from fifth to seventh and fourth to 13th, respectively.

Amsterdam’s rise warrants a closer look at the biggest Dutch banks which, as revealed by The Banker data, are an eclectic bunch.

Top of the table is ING which, as at December 2015, had a healthy Bank for International Settlements (BIS) capital ratio of 16.04% and posted $6.97bn pre-tax profits, an increase of 49% from the previous year. Next is Rabobank, whose historic head office was in Utrecht but has its statutory headquarters in Amsterdam. It has an even higher BIS ratio of 23.2% and increased pre-tax profits by 52.9% last year to reach $3.12bn.

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Next is ABN Amro which listed in November 2015 after its local operations had to be nationalised by the Dutch government in 2008. Despite its troubled past, the bank last year posted $2.96bn in pre-tax profits and a 21.7% BIS ratio.

The chaser pack is led by Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten (BNG), which provides public sector funding and is owned by the national government and local authorities, and retail lender SNS Bank. Their BIS ratios are an impressive 27% and 25.4%, respectively. SNS’s pre-tax profits of $517.39m are understandably lower than those of ING, Rabobank and ABN Amro, but its 16.32% return on capital outstrips its bigger competitors.

All data is consolidated at bank holding company level and sourced from www.thebankerdatabase.com

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