The World’s Top Banks by Profits and Losses

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Each year The Banker magazine publishes a list of the best global banks based on various factors such as profits, losses, assets, etc. The graphic below lists the best and worst banks based on 2009 data:

Banks-Winners-Loser-2009

via The Economist

It is interesting to note that the two most profitable banks in the world are Chinese banks – ICBC and China Construction Bank(OTC: CICHY). Two other Chinese banks that are in this list include Bank of China(OTC: BACHF) and Agricultural Bank of China. The three Brazilian banks that made it to this ranking are Banco Bradesco(BBD),Itau Unibanco(ITUB) and Banco do Brasil (OTC: BDORY). Anglo Irish was the worst bank in terms of losses followed by GMAC and Citibank(C). Despite many bailouts in the developed world, European and American banks dominate the losers category.

Professor: More Oil Spills to Come

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Recently the Insurance Journal published an interesting article on oil spills and some of the issues that are ignored in the mainstream media when discussing BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill.

From the article:

“The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not simply a random accident. There will be more of these spills to come, as the days of easy oil are over, says an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

“BP and other oil companies have tried to portray this spill as an accident or an aberration, but in fact there are spills on off-shore and on-shore sites around the world, increasingly,” says Bret Gustafson, PhD, associate professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences. Gustafson teaches a course on “Oil Wars: America and the Cultural Politics of Global Energy.”

A rig sank off the coast of Venezuela in May. Last October, a rig spilled oil for two months into the Timor Sea off of Australia. There are recurring spills in virtually every oil region, such as the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Amazon and Nigeria.

“These environmental and public health catastrophes are almost always accompanied by corruption and violence tied to oil activities,” Gustafson says. In the United States, which is more of a consumer than producer of oil, we are generally ignorant about this reality of oil until something like this comes home to roost.”

Rest of the piece can be found here.

Six Foreign Bank Stocks With High Dividend Yields

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The following six non-European bank stocks have dividend yields of over 5% as of June 30,2010:

1.Bank: BBVA Banco Frances (BFR)
Current Dividend Yield: 10.78%
Country: Argentina

2.Bank: Banco de Chile (BCH)
Current Dividend Yield: 6.45%
Country: Chile

3.Bank: DBS Group Holdings Ltd (OTC: DBSDY)
Current Dividend Yield: 8.49%
Country: Singapore

4.Bank: Westpac Banking Corp (WBK)
Current Dividend Yield: 6.66%
Country: Australia

5.Bank: National Australia Bank Ltd (OTC: NABZY)
Current Dividend Yield: 6.77%
Country: Australia

6.Bank: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (OTC: ANZBY)
Current Dividend Yield: 5.27%
Country: Australia

Knowledge is Power: Germany, Stress Test, Small Banks Edition

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Germany’s Export Boom Has Trade Partners Stewing

Chinese banks pass extreme loan default stress test

First 3 German banks pass stress tests-sources

BofA reclaims top spot, ICBC leads profit: study

CP, CN railways to get boost from economic recovery

Why China’s revaluation can’t solve America’s problems

What East Asia-Pacific countries have to teach the world

Money in the small banks

torres-del-paine-national-park.jpg

Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

The Different Phases of a Bubble

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I came across this interesting graph that shows the different phases of a bubble:

Asset-Bubble-Chart

Source Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/ancientsong#p/u/18/PHo1bqIp71E

On a related note, Bloomberg BusinessWeek published an article on the real estate bubble in Vancouver, Canada.

Click to Enlarge

Vancouver-Bubble-Homes

From the article:

“The Olympics are over, and the Village is for sale. The complex in Vancouver, British Columbia, that housed the athletes during the 2010 Winter Olympics has been converted into 1,100 luxury condos. About 450 have been pre-sold, and the sales of the remainder may well render a verdict on a mystery that looms over this city like Grouse Mountain: Did Canada prudently steer its way clear of the worst of the financial crisis only to be rewarded with a massive housing bubble of its own?

On a bright, warm Saturday in late June, couples and families wandered through the empty village, which has been renamed Millenium Water. It opened for public tours last month and draws about 100 people a day. Millenium Water is a city of the future, built with enviro-touches like green roofs and automatic shades that moderate the temperature inside the apartments. An 815-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment is on sale for C$879,000, which works out to C$1,078 per square foot, or $12 higher than the average price in Manhattan, according to The Corcoran Report. (A Canadian dollar is currently worth about U.S. 96 cents.)

Millenium Water isn’t in downtown Manhattan, of course. It’s not even in downtown Vancouver, which is across an inlet known as False Creek. It isn’t really even in a neighborhood; the nearest establishment is the sales office for another condo development. If all this is starting to sound a little irrationally exuberant, especially given the shaky international outlook, well, that’s Vancouver for you.”

The Vancouver real estate market is currently in the Mania Phase. It is not just Vancouver where prices have reached the bubble stage. Across Canada home prices have soared and continue to defy gravity. It remains to be seen how long the mania phase can last in Canada.