Five Korean Banks on List of World’s 100 Largest Banks

Five Korean banks - Kookmin Bank, Woori Financial Group, Shinhan Financial Group, National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (Nonghyup), and Hana Financial Group- have been ranked among the world’s 100 largest banks.

According to the Bank of Korea, U.K.-based financial magazine “The Banker” released the list of the world’s 1,000 largest banks by core capital as of late 2007 in its July edition. On the list, Korea’s Kookmin Bank with 16.2 billion dollars of core capital rose by six notches to become the world’s 56th biggest and Korea’s largest bank.

Also included among the world’s 100 largest banks were Woori Financial Group (65th), Shinhan Financial Group (77th), National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (90th), and Hana Financial Group (93rd).

After ranking 109th in 2006, Nonghyup jumped to 90th place last year. Woori Financial Group also rose two notches to 67th place. On the other hand, Shinhan Financial Group and Hana Financial Group each fell by one notch.

The list of the world’s 1,000 largest banks include the aforementioned five Korean banks, as well as the Industrial Bank of Korea (118th), Korea Exchange Bank(119th), Daegu Bank (367th), Pusan Bank (380th), Kwang Ju Bank (589th), and Jeongbuk Bank (970th).

The list showed the poor performance of U.S. banks in the wake of the subprime mortgage loan crisis. Even though the place of the world’s largest bank had been filled with U.S. banks for nine straight years until 2006, the U.K.’s HSBC with 105 billion dollars of core capital was named the world’s biggest bank in 2007.

parky@donga.com