ICBC is world's biggest bank by deposits

The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest lender by market value, has said it is also become the biggest by deposits after clients stashed another 950 billion yuan ($140 billion) of cash in the first quarter of the calendar year.

Deposits rose to 8.9 trillion yuan ($1.3 trillion) as of March 31, the Beijing-based lender said in an e-mailed statement today. Including deposits from financial companies, the figure amounted to 9.78 trillion yuan ($1.43 trillion), it said.

Growing deposits may continue to fuel new loans by ICBC and other Chinese banks, which surged more than six-fold from a year earlier to a record 1.89 trillion yuan ($276 billion) in March. Deposits helped shield Chinese lenders from the worst of the credit market squeeze that ravaged US and European rivals.

 

Chinese banks increased their combined profit by 31 per cent in 2008 to 583.4 billion yuan ($85 billion), after the government lifted lending curbs to stem a slowdown in economic growth.

ICBC overtook JPMorgan Chase & Co, currently the biggest US bank by deposits, and Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, according to the statement.

JPMorgan had $1 trillion in deposits at the end of 2008, while the Japanese lender held $1.29 trillion as of March 31, 2008, according to Bloomberg data.

ICBC overtook Citigroup as the world’s largest bank by market value in July 2007, after less than a year as a public company.