The Global Finance magazine recently announced its annual ranking of the World’s 50 Safest Banks for 2011. These top banks were selected based on an evaluation of long-term credit ratings—from Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch—and total assets of the 500 largest banks worldwide.
From the magazine report:
The sovereign debt crisis is still raging in Europe and renewed fears of contagion from southern European countries is affecting banking and market outlooks throughout Europe.Global political instability is also in the spotlight—from the upheavals in the Middle East and Africa to the US debt downgrade by Standard & Poor’s, companies are watching closely to see how these events are affecting their counterparties.
With more than 40 of the top 50 banks from last year once again making the list, the Global Finance ranking shows that most of the top echelon of banks are truly worthy of the moniker World’s Safest Bank.
The table below lists the World’s 50 Safest Banks for this year together with the ticker if available:
[TABLE=1036]
Source: Global Finance
Some observations:
- The five largest Canadian banks and Montreal-based Caisse centrale Desjardins have made it to this list.
- Among the U.S. banks, Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) did not make the cut.
- Denver-Colorado based CoBank is a $66 billion cooperative bank serving industries across rural America.
- Despite fears of banking failures in Europe, the majority of the banks in this ranking are European banks.
Disclosure: Long USB, BNS, BMO, RY, TD, SCGLY, STD, BBVA
