ICBC Deposes Citigroup as Chinese Banks Rule in New World Order

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- There's a new world order for banks, and the Chinese, for the first time, are the biggest, with a market capitalization that has made perennial No. 1 Citigroup Inc. a distant also-ran behind Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp. and Bank of China Ltd.

``The tables have been completely turned,'' said Daniel Yergin, the Washington, D.C.-based chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates Inc. during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The reversal of fortunes is the clearest sign yet that shareholders are betting on banks in the emerging markets rather than the U.S. institutions that dominated the financial landscape for most of the past century. As recently as 2003, there were 13 American banks ranked in the top 20 and not a single Asian rival, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Now, there are four Asian and six U.S. institutions. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market wiped out almost $100 billion of value from the three biggest U.S. banks in the past six months.

It was just a year ago that Citigroup was the world's biggest bank by market value, and ICBC was beginning its fourth month as a publicly traded company.

Today, Beijing-based ICBC is the largest financial-services firm and Citigroup has tumbled to seventh on growing concern that the 196-year-old company is no match for a bank based in the world's fastest-growing major economy that has more customers than the combined populations of France, Spain and the U.K.

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ICBC Deposes Citigroup as Chinese Banks Rule in New World Order

ICBC Deposes Citigroup as Chinese Banks Rule in New World Order

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