It has been impossible to escape the retrospectives on the 10 years since Lehman Brothers collapsed in late 2008, the year when the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was briefly the biggest bank in the world by total assets and Bear Stearns was 'fine'. The true depth of the liquidity crisis in the global banking sector was only beginning to become apparent on balance sheets in The Banker's 2009 Top 1000 World Banks ranking. US banks made up the top three, with JPMorgan at the front of the pack. The UK's RBS and HSBC rounded off the top five, with ICBC the lone Chinese bank in eighth place.
Top 1000 Aggregates