About two months back when I had tried compiling a list of
world's top banks by asssets, the task was not easy. The main reasons being that full year results of all companies were not out.
Also, all the firms don't report their numbers in dollars using a point-in-time exchange rates was debatable. However, recently Forbes had published the list of world's top 2000 companies. Great!, so now I know who stands where without much efforts :). If we go by the Forbes numbers (which I beleive should be correct), the top 10 companies in the whole world when put in the order of their balance sheet size are as follows:
| Rank | Company | Country | Assets
($bil) |
| 1 | Royal Bank of Scotland | United Kingdom | 3491 |
| 2 | Barclays | United Kingdom | 2948 |
| 3 | Deutsche Bank | Germany | 2947 |
| 4 | BNP Paribas | France | 2889 |
| 5 | HSBC Holdings | United Kingdom | 2520 |
| 6 | JPMorgan Chase | United States | 2175 |
| 7 | Crédit Agricole | France | 2064 |
| 8 | Citigroup | United States | 1939 |
| 9 | Mitsubishi UFJ Financial | Japan | 1931 |
| 10 | UBS | Switzerland | 1899 |
No surprise these are all banks or financial institutions. Banks have a slightly different way of accounting and the public deposits form a significant part of their assets. As a matter of fact in the top 50 companies only two companies, GE(ranked 28th) and Deutsche Post (ranked 49th), are outside the financial domain. While GE's presence in top 50 was expected, Deutsche Post at 49th position was a bit of surprise for me.
For the complete list of 2000 companies, please visit
Forbes.
Source: Forbes, Google Finance, Reuters.
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