With the soundness of the global banking system still the focus of many policy-makers and regulators – and the final capital standards still being debated in Basel and elsewhere – The Banker’s Top 1000 World Banks offers important insight into the global banking system’s capital-to-asset ratios (CAR).
Over the past two years, banks have continued to boost their capitalisation levels. This year’s ranking shows that total Tier 1 capital for the Top 1000 rose 10.5%, to $5433bn, easily outstripping the growth in assets. This shows that the trend towards higher CAR worldwide continues unabated. Among the 25 largest banks by Tier 1 capital, capitalisation is rising even more sharply – Tier 1 capital was up 12.1%, whereas assets grew more slowly than for the Top 1000 as a whole, by 5.9%.
