S&P Global Market Intelligence's latest annual rankings showed that the top four banks in the world are from China. S&P said that the big four banks in China increased their total assets by 1 percent in 2018 to $13.8 trillion despite the ongoing trade war.
The ranking showed that the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China remained the biggest bank in the world and it is known to be the only lender that has accumulated more than $4 trillion in assets. It is estimated to have the combined size of Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and the Bank of China followed the industrial &commercial Bank of China on the list. The other three are also state-owned banks that are each worth more than $3 trillion.
The collective asset value of the four banks is $13.784 trillion. It is 1.07 percent bigger than their combined asset last year. The data from S&P showed that the increase would have been 6.84 percent if not to the 5 percent slide of the yuan over a dollar in 2018.
Chinese institutions also dominate the list after 19 institutions were included which holds the collective worth of assets amounting to $24.160 trillion. Two new financial institutions in China, China Zheshang Bank, ranked 99th, and the Merger of BB&T and SunTrust Banks, at 62nd place, are new to the list.
American banks got left behind because of the financial crisis and they've still got some growing to do to catch up to their counterparts in China.
Two American banks, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America joined the top ten list of the S&P ranking of the world's largest banks. JP Morgan Chase, which sports $2.6 trillion in assets, is now considered as the king of American banks after they posted their record profit and revenue.
The Wells Fargo continues to suffer for the past two-and-a-half years from the scandal that they were into. Citigroup moved up Wells Fargo on the list to become the No.3 bank in the United States in terms of assets.
It is expected that big banks will gain the spotlight this week while the earnings season continues. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley remain pressured to show that tranquillity in the global financial markets that started 2019 was withstood by their trading arms.
The ups and downs in the global financial market greatly affect the investment banks.
