It is interesting to note that the five largest banks in terms of assets are in Asia, with Chinese banks holding the first four positions. The list also includes two banks from the United States and France and one bank from the United Kingdom. In terms of regions, 35 of the 100 largest banks by assets are located in EU, 18 in China, 12 in the US, 8 in Japan and 6 in France and the UK. There’s a completely different picture when market capitalization is considered instead of the assets. In this case, JPMorgan takes the first place as US banks overall rank considerably higher on the list.
ICBC is a state-run commercial bank that opened its first branch in 1984 in Beijing. Five years later it opened another branch in Europe, in Luxemburg. Now the company has outlets in most major European cities. In 2006 the bank had an IPO, but before that, it received capital injections from Goldman Sachs and American Express. ICBC had the largest IPO ever at that time that was valued at over $21 billion. It wasn’t until 2008 that the bank was allowed to establish a branch in the New York City. In terms of loans, it serves a variety of sectors. About 20% of its loans are made to manufacturing industry, 11% to transportation, storage, postage & telecommunications and 8% to power, gas, and water. ICBC ranks as number one in The Banker’s list of top 1000 World Banks and leads the list of Forbes Global 2000 as well. As of 2016, the bank had over 460,000 employees.