The aggregate capital-to-assets ratio for the Top 1000 world banks crossed the 6% threshold for the first time in this year’s ranking, as the trend for banks to boost their capitalisation continues. At first sight, the global banking landscape is also normalising. In particular, the recovery continues in Europe, notwithstanding the €9.5bn capital shortfall identified by the European Banking Authority in its 2014 comprehensive assessment. Western Europe’s share of global profits is still far below its pre-crisis peak, but it jumped to 14.2% in the 2015 ranking from 11.1% the year before.
At the same time, Asia-Pacific’s outsized share of profits shrank a little, but is still just over 50% of global pre-tax profits. The real drama this year is in eastern Europe, where conflict in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and widespread currency depreciation have taken the share of global profits to just 1%, from 2.6% the year before.
