Canadian banks have dominated a new Bloomberg survey of the world's strongest banks, according to an article in the June issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine. CIBC (CM) was No 3 in Bloomberg Markets' second annual ranking of the world's strongest banks, followed by three of its Canadian rivals: Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) (No 4), National Bank of Canada (NA) (No 5) and Royal Bank of Canada (No 6), the country's largest lender. Bank of Nova Scotia ranked 18th, and Bank of Montreal was 22nd.
Singapore's Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp retained the title of the world's strongest bank for the second year, followed by BOC Hong Kong Holdings Ltd. (2388) Two other Singaporean lenders-United Overseas Bank Ltd (UOB) (No 7) and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (DBS) (No 8)-were also among the strongest.
Bloomberg considered only banks with at least US$100 billion in assets and ranked the lenders by comparing Tier 1 capital with risk-weighted assets, for example, and nonperforming assets with total assets. Three of the highly ranked Canadian banks operate in T&T-RBC, CIBC and Bank of Nova Scotia.