2010-06-30 13:16

There are 84 Chinese banks sitting in the world's top 1,000 now, though accounting for nine percent of capital but making a quarter of profits, according to a global magazine "The Banker" tracking banking services.

Bank of America has leapfrogged JPMorgan to rank as the world's top bank in terms of capital strength while Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) tops the profit league.

Bank of America topped The Banker magazine's 2010 ranking of the world's banks, based on Tier 1 capital.

The US bank's Tier 1 capital rose by a third from last year to $160 billion, which saw it swap places with JPMorgan, whose Tier 1 capital dipped two percent to $133 billion.

Citgroup ranked third in the latest list, followed by Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC.The magazine uses Tier 1 capital as a measure of a bank's ability to lend on a large scale and endure shocks.

ICBC of China topped the rankings for 2009 pretax profit after earning $24.5 billion, ahead of China Construction Bank on $20.3 billion. US investment bank Goldman Sachs ranked third with a profit of $19.8 billion and Barclays was Europe's most profitable bank with $18.9 billion last year.

The biggest loss was posted by Anglo Irish Bank with an $18.5 billion hit. GMAC, the US financial services firm majority owned by the US government, and Citi followed with respective losses of $10.3 billion and $8.4 billion.

Profits for the top 1000 banks were almost four times last year higher than in 2008, but returns have fallen sharply from the boom years, the data showed.

US banks swung to a $37.5 billion profit last year from a $91 billion loss, while British banks recovered to a $29.5 billion profit from a $51 billion loss.

In contrast, Japan's banks lost $11.1 billion last year after making profits of $16.5 billion in 2008.