It will come as no surprise that 2011 was the year when the eurozone crisis dragged the global banking sector backwards. Assets and Tier 1 capital in The Banker’s Top 1000 World Banks ranking continue to grow, although at a much reduced rate to last year’s ranking. But aggregate profits, which had staged two years of recovery since the financial crisis, reversed by 1%, to stay only just above the $700bn mark.
The process of capital build-up demanded by regulators in the wake of the crisis also appears to be approaching completion, as the aggregate capital-to-assets ratio this year is almost exactly constant on last year, at 5.36%. The heaviest capital increases in previous years had been among the top 25 banks, whereas the change in the capital-to-assets ratio for those largest banks this year is in line with the Top 1000 as a whole, gaining just 0.1%.
