The Banker’s latest Top 1000 World Banks listing shows that banks are back making record profits. The aggregate pre-tax profits of the Top 1000 shot up by a mammoth 65.4% to reach an all-time record of $417.5bn as the Japanese banks moved back into profit and institutions around the globe revelled in improving economic conditions. The listing also highlights the dominant position of EU and US banks, which account for almost three-quarters of total profits, and the unrivalled profitability of the US banks.
The Banker’s Top 1000 is the definitive ranking of the world’s major banks based on both Tier One capital and assets. It also contains the latest data on profits, performance ratios and a variety of other indicators. It is the most comprehensive global banking information source and our research team, headed by Terry Baker-Self, along with Beata Ghavimi and Matthew Dickie, deserve enormous credit for a difficult task well done.
As well as 112 pages of Top 1000 listings and analysis The Banker also includes Jacob Wallenberg’s views on corporate governance, interviews with Israel’s finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu and African leaders from Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania, as well as Malaysia’s central bank governor, and a corporate finance survey involving seven chief financial officers and four corporate treasurers.
In capital markets, Geraldine Lambe talks to Lehman Brothers’ Jeremy Isaacs and Team of the Month is DrKW for its deal for Casino. We also look at the reshaping of research and ISDA’s plan to automate the over-the-counter derivatives market. In FX & Treasury we examine the importance of Reuters’ deal with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and in global securities services we ask if Japan is the key to a regional approach to custody in the Asia-Pacific region
In western Europe, we compare financial mergers in France and Germany. Moving east, we analyse banking developments in Russia and in a special supplement we assess optimism in Ukraine. In Asia, we look at volatility in China, recovery in South Korea and prospects in Taiwan while elsewhere we study the strength of the banking sector in Bolivia and positive signals in Egypt.
In retail, we assess the UK Post Office’s new joint venture, the importance of service quality in a multi-channel environment and a special supplement also looks at effective self-service. In technology, we look at the pricing of outsourcing and the growth of offshoring. And our mammoth issue includes supplements on real-time core banking and the implementation of Basel II.
