What is the largest bank in the world?

Are you talking about assets, holdings, depositors, or height of their headquarters building?

According to this:

http://www.netvalley.com/banks/index.html

it looks like Bank of America....

The world's largest banks

September 21, 2006

Based on the list that appeared in the July issue of The Banker (a Financial Times publication) HSBC Holdings was placed at the second slot after Citigroup, with a capital base of $74.4 billion. It is followed by Bank of America ($74 billion), JP Morgan Chase ($72.4 billion), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group ($63.9 billion), Credit Agricole Groupe ($60.6 billion), Royal Bank of Scotland ($48.6 billion), Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group ($39.6 billion), Mizuho Financial Group ($38.8 billion), and Santander Central Hispano $38.4 million).

So, the global Top 10 features three banks each from the United States and Japan, two from the United Kingdom, and one each from France and Spain. China's biggest bank, China Construction Bank Corporation, is the world's 11th largest bank with a capital base of $35.6 billion.

In other words, the Spanish bank Santander Central Hispano is as big as the entire Indian banking industry and the Citigroup is twice as much in terms of capital employed.

Things don't get much better even when you shift the focus to Asia (excluding Japan). China Construction Bank Corporation is the Asian giant. It is followed by its local peer Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (Tier I capital: $31.7 billion) and Bank of China ($31.4 billion).

Then comes National Australia Bank ($17.3 billion), Kookmin Bank of South Korea ($11.6 billion), ANZ Banking Group ($11.5 billion), Commonwealth Banking Group ($10.8 billion), Agriculture Bank of China ($9.8 billion), Westpac Banking Corporation ($9.3 billion) and Bank of Communications ($8.9 billion).

So, China dominates the Asian banking space occupying five of the top ten slots, Australia accounts for four slots and South Korea for one. Here again, the Asian giant is four and half times bigger than SBI.

The other Indian bank that features in the list of the Top 25 in Asia is ICICI Bank, at the 22nd slot. ICICI Bank's capital base is slightly more than half of that of SBI ($4.3 billion versus $7.9 billion). Punjab National Bank has half of ICICI Bank's capital ($2.1 billion).

Bank of Baroda is next with a Tier I capital of about $1.8 billion, followed by Canara Bank ($1.5 billion). Three other Indian banks have more than $1 billion worth of Tier I capital. They are Industrial Development Bank of India ($1.48 billion), HDFC Bank ($1.15 billion) and Bank of India ($1.13 billion).

There are at least 15 banks in the world which have assets over $1 trillion. Citigroup is one of them. The others are HSBC, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Mitsubishi UFJ, Credit Agricole, Royal Bank of Scotland, Mizuho Financial Group, Barclays, ABN Amro, UBS, Deutsche, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Credit Suisse. No Chinese Bank has over $1 trillion assets. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which has the maximum asset base, has a book size of about $800 billion. This is over five times State Bank of India's asset base and roughly about the size of India's total banking assets.

Similarly, SBI's consolidated pre-tax profit is $1.9 billion against Citigroup's $29 billion, Bank of America's $25 billion and HSBC's $21 billion. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's pre-tax profit last year was $7.3 billion and that of China Construction Bank was $6.8 billion.

http://us.rediff.com/money/2006/sep/21guest.htm