The World’s 20 Strongest Banks

The Bloomberg Markets magazine has published the list of The World’s Strongest Banks.Singapore-based Overseas-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) was ranked the world’s strongest bank based on its performance for the 2010 fiscal year.

 The World’s Strongest Banks

1 Overseas-Chinese Banking (Singapore)
2 Svenska Handelsbanken (Sweden)
3 National Bank of Canada
4 Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
5 DBS Group Holdings (Singapore)
6 United overseas Bank (Singapore)
7 Fifth Third Bancorp (U.S.)
8 Banco Bradesco (Brazil)
9 UBS (Switzerland)
10 BOC Hong Kong (Holdings)
11 Banco Santander (Brazil)
12 Toronto Dominion Bank
13 Credit Suisse Group (Switzerland)
14 JPMorgan Chase (U.S.)
15 Standard Chartered (U.K.)
16 CitiGroup (U.S.)
17 Royal Bank of Canada
18 Hang Seng Bank (Hong Kong)
19 Bank of Montreal
20 Sberbank (Russia)

In addition to OCBC, DBS (DBSDY) and United Overseas Bank (UOVEY) of Singapore also appear among the top 10. Canadian banks dominate the list with the third spot going to National Bank of Canada.Swedish bank Svenska Handelsbanken(SVNLY) was ranked the second strongest bank. I wrote a post about Handelsbanken last November discussing why this bank’s stock is the greatest in the world in terms of returns.

From the Bloomberg report:

Just three U.S. banks — Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) (No. 7), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) (No. 14) and Citigroup (No. 16) — make the top 20.

The ranking includes banks with at least $100 billion in assets. It weighs and combines five criteria, including Tier 1 capital compared with risk-weighted assets; nonperforming assets compared with total assets; and efficiency, a comparison of costs against revenues.

Tier 1 capital includes a bank’s cash reserves, outstanding common stock and some classes of preferred stock, all of which combine to act as a shock absorber against losses when the economy hits a rough patch.

Moody’s publishes a ranking each quarter based on financial strength. TD of Canada tops this list as shown below:

Moody’s Top 10 Banks
Issuer/Entity Bank Financial Strength Rating (BFSR)
1 The Toronto-Dominion Bank                          B+
2 The Bank of New York Mellon                         B+
3 Rabobank Nederland                                      B+
4 Hang Seng Bank Limited                                 B+
5 Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp.        B+
6 U.S. Bank National Association                       B+
7 Commerce Bank, N.A.                                     B+
8 Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Ltd                B
9 JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA                               B
10 National Australia Bank Limited                   B

Disclosure: Long TD, BMO, RY, CM, USB, FITB

3 Comments

  1. Very surprised that there are no Australian banks on your list? Most similar lists have the 4 major Australian banks usually all rank in the top 15.

  2. Yep. Bloomberg Mkts magazine used different criteria to evaluate banks. Thats why Aussie banks did not make it to this list. Not sure on the exact factors they used to come up with this ranking. Thanks.

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