Top 10 global financial centres

As of March 2009, the following is the ranking of the top financial centres of the world as published by GFCI (Global Financial Centres Index):

The GFCI is published by City of London Corporation every March. The full report by GFCI can be found at ZYEN.

	Rank	GFCI rating
London	1	781
New York	2	768
Singapore	3	687
Hong Kong	4	684
Zurich	5	659
Geneva	6	638
Chicago	7	638
Frankfurt	8	633
Boston	9	618
Dublin	10	618

London, the financial hub of the world, has been at the helm since long time. London, also the banking centre of the world, has headquarters of more than 100 of European's 500 biggest companies.

Standard Chartered Bank announces $3 billion rights issue

Standard Chartered Bank has gone ahead with raising capital to weather the economic downturn and take advantage of the opportunities available in current situation. StanChart is listed on London and Hong Kong stock exchanges. StanChart announced that it will raise £1.78bn through rights issue at 390 pence per share, huge discount to its current market price of 760 pence per share. Existing shareholders will have the option of subscribing 30 new shares for every 91 shares held. This step will raise its Tire-1 capital ratio to 7.4% from 6.1%. This is in line with the industry wide shift of Tire-1 capital ratio towards 8%.

Temasek Holdings Pte is currently the biggest shareholder in StanChart with owning about 19% of the company. If Temasek goes ahead with the rights it can increase its stake to 22%. But this will make StanChart lose the right of printing Hong Kong currency. According to Hong Kong Monetary Authority regulations no bank with more than 20% owned by foreign government can issue currency notes in Hong Kong.

Remarkably, StanChart has so far been relatively insulated from the subprime crisis because of its focus on emerging markets like India, Taiwan etc. But now the economic situation spreading, even the emerging economies are not insulated and it is good option to raise capital while you still can.

Top Hedge funds 2007 [Alpha Magazine]

The following ranking of the hedge funds by Alpha Magazine was published on May 2007. JP Morgan Asset Management leads the list with Goldman Sachs Asset Management a close second.






Source: Alpha

Top 20 Global Commercial & Savings Banks (Fortune)

The global top 20 commercial and saving banks along with their base country as appearing in the Fortune 500 list for 2007 are:

Bank Rank	Financial Institution Name	Country
1	Citigroup	US
2	Crédit Agricole	France
3	Fortis	Belgium/Netherlands
4	Bank of America Corp.	US
5	HSBC Holdings	Britain
6	BNP Paribas	France
7	UBS	Switzerland
8	J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	US
9	Deutsche Bank	Germany
10	Dexia Group	Belgium
11	Credit Suisse	Switzerland
12	Société Générale	France
13	Royal Bank of Scotland	Britain
14	HBOS	Britain
15	ABN AMRO Holding	Netherlands
16	Santander Central Hispano Group	Spain
17	Barclays	Britain
18	UniCredit Group	Italy
19	Lloyds TSB Group	Britain
20	Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group	Japan

Britain outscores others in number of banks in top 20 with 25% banks (5 out of 20) based in Britain. The country wise list is:

Country	No. in top Twenty
Britain	5
France	3
US	3
Belgium	2
Netherlands	2
Switzerland	2
Germany	1
Italy	1
Japan	1
Spain	1

Source: Fortune

Global top companies by market value

These ranking were issued by Financial Times for third quarter of 2007. The data of prices and market capitalization for these ranking have been taken on 28 September 2007. FT publishes a list of top 500 global companies every quarter. The entire list can be accessed at the source link given at the end of this post.

Global 500 rank Sep 2007	Global 500 rank Jun 2007	Company	Country
1	1	Exxon Mobil	US
2	2	General Electric	US
3	12	China Mobile	Hong Kong
4	13	Industrial & Commercial Bank of China	China
5	3	Microsoft	US
6	4	Royal Dutch Shell	Netherlands
7	7	Gazprom	Russia
8	5	AT&T	US
9	6	Citigroup	US
10	10	Bank of America	US
11	8	BP	UK
12	17	Procter & Gamble	US
13	11	HSBC	UK
14	30	China Construction Bank	China
15	37	China Life Insurance	China
16	26	BHP Billiton	Australia/UK
17	9	Toyota Motor	Japan
18	23	Cisco Systems	US
19	19	Chevron	US
20	36	Sinopec	China
21	16	Total	France
22	15	EDF	France
23	22	Vodafone Group	UK
24	21	Johnson & Johnson	US
25	24	Berkshire Hathaway	US
26	29	Bank of China	China
27	14	Wal-Mart Stores	US
28	31	Nestle	Switzerland
29	18	American International Group	US
30	20	Pfizer	US

With the IPO of PetroChina in October, and its market value crossing a trillion dollars, the highest ever by any company, the rankings have changed with PetroChina coming right at the top.

Source: FT