The global proportion of market risk-weighted assets (RWAs) has dropped significantly in this year’s ranking, to 4.39% of total RWAs from 5.86% in last year’s Top 1000. Deleveraging in western Europe has played a major role in this change, as banks shrank the size of their trading desks in a bid to meet higher capital requirements imposed by regulators. Market RWAs have fallen to 5.87% of the total in western Europe from 6.76%. As the region has the second largest total of RWAs after Asia-Pacific, this change has a significant impact on the global proportions.
Philip Alexander reports on the full results of The Banker’s Top 1000 World Banks ranking 2014, in the story Top 1000 World Banks 2014: Back on track?