The Global Finance magazine has published its list of the world’s 50 safest banks for this year. These banks were selected “through a comparison of the long-term credit ratings and total assets of the 500 largest banks around the world. Ratings from Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch were used.” The magazine has published this annual listing for 19 years.

The World’s 50 Safest Banks 2010:

[TABLE=526]

Source: Global Finance

Some notable points from the ranking are:

1. Of the six major Canadian banks, five are in this list.
2. The “four pillar” banks of Australia – National Australia Bank (NABZY), Westpac Banking Corporation(WBK), Commonwealth Bank of Australia(CMWAY) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZBY) have made it to the top 50.
3. The tiny city state of Singapore is represented by three banks confirming the strength of the Singapore’s banking system.
4. Some of the major British banks such as Llyods Group (LYG), Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS) and Standard Chartered did not make it to the list.
5. Among the “Too-Big-To-Fail” US banks, Bank of America(BAC) and Citigroup(C) are also absent in the table above.
6. Overall most of the safest banks are from developed countries.Despite the growth of many emerging market banks as global players such as the Chinese banks, none of them appear in the ranking.

This week SNL Financial released the list of the biggest 50 U.S. banks and thrifts based on assets as of 2Q, 2010. The list is shown below with tickers included for banks that are public traded:

[TABLE=525]

Some of the key points from the rankings are:

1. First Niagara Financial Group Inc jumped to 38th position after its recent takeover of NewAlliance Bancshares Inc.

2. Bank of America(BAC) and JPMorgan & Chase(JPM) are the only banks with assets of over $2 Trillion each.

3. TD Bank US Holding Co and RBC BanCorp are US subsidiaries of Canadian banks Toronto-Dominion Bank(TD) and Royal Bank of Canada(RY) respectively.

4. Other US subsidiaries of foreign banks in the list are: HSBC North America Holdings Inc. of HSBC Holdings (HBC) of UK,
ING Bank FSB of ING Groep(ING) of The Netherlands, Santander Holdings USA Inc of Banco Santander (STD) of Spain and BBVA USA Bancshares Inc. of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) of Spain.