This annual ranking by The Banker is well-known in the worldwide banking sector for its rigorous preparation and its scope, as it includes data from the 1,000 largest financial institutions in the world.  The data appear in dollars and the magazine updates the accounting criteria every year. As highlighted by the magazine, the impact of the crisis on bank profits has been a fundamental factor in world ranking: The total profits of listed banks dropped 85.3% - from 780 billion dollars to 115 billion - , and capital return fell by 20%. 

Recapitalization processes

However – the magazine explains, the heavy losses registered by many institutions have triggered a recapitalization process that in many cases has been carried out with public capital.  As a result, the self-owned resources that comprise the Tier 1 total increased by 9.7%. Likewise, worldwide bank assets grew 6.8%, although at a slower pace than in previous years. The 2008 ranking clearly reflects that the banking status quo remains relatively stable: While Chinese and Spanish banks lead in the profit table, western institutions dominate the classification according to self-owned resources and assets. 

In this context, BBVA clearly appears as one of the winners. The Group finished the year in fifth place in the worldwide ranking by profits – The Banker uses earnings before taxes (EBT), which in BBVA’s case grew to 9.64 billion dollars – when, in size it ranks 32, with total assets of 755.25 billion dollars.  This means that BBVA, which ranked 13 in the world in EBT in 2007, has less intrinsec risk in its balance sheet and less leverage than the majority of its competitors. Last year, the world ranking was led by the Royal Bank of Scotland, which had the dubious honor of being the group that recorded the highest losses (59.28 billion dollars). 

In addition to that privileged position by results, BBVA also climbed a position in the world ranking for market capitalization: At the end of 2008, it ranked fourteenth in the world with a market value of 45.36 billion dollars, one place ahead of last year. Also according to The Banker, BBVA maintained its position at number 30 of the world classification for self-owned resources in the Tier 1 category. Maintaining this position becomes more meaningful if we take into consideration that BBVA was the only bank that did not increase its capital or receive injections of public capital; the improvement of its capital ratio occurred organically. This same week, S&P has highlighted that BBVA and Santander “could weather the storm” and place themselves among the leading institutions after the crisis, due to the influence of their international franchise network.