A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Whereas banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords. (Full article...)
Fractional-reserve banking is the system of banking in all countries worldwide, under which banks that take deposits from the public keep only part of their deposit liabilities in liquid assets as a reserve, typically lending the remainder to borrowers. Bank reserves are held as cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the central bank. Fractional-reserve banking differs from the hypothetical alternative model, full-reserve banking, in which banks would keep all depositor funds on hand as reserves.
The country's central bank may determine a minimum amount that banks must hold in reserves, called the "reserve requirement" or "reserve ratio". Most commercial banks hold more than this minimum amount as excess reserves. Some countries, e.g. the core Anglosphere countries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the three Scandinavian countries, do not impose reserve requirements at all. (Full article...)
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A 2007 run on Northern Rock, a British bank The Diamond–Dybvig model is an influential model of bank runs and related financial crises. The model shows how banks' mix of illiquid assets (such as business or mortgage loans) and liquid liabilities (deposits which may be withdrawn at any time) may give rise to self-fulfilling panics among depositors. Diamond and Dybvig, along with Ben Bernanke, were the recipients of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on the Diamond-Dybvig model. (Full article...)
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Wall Street during the bank panic in October 1907. Federal Hall National Memorial, with its statue of George Washington, is seen on the right. The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis, was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange suddenly fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. The panic occurred during a time of economic recession, and there were numerous runs affecting banks and trust companies. The 1907 panic eventually spread throughout the nation when many state and local banks and businesses entered bankruptcy. The primary causes of the run included a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks and a loss of confidence among depositors, exacerbated by unregulated side bets at bucket shops.
The panic was triggered by the failed attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company. When the bid failed, banks that had lent money to the cornering scheme suffered runs that later spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading a week later to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, New York City's third-largest trust. The collapse of the Knickerbocker spread fear throughout the city's trusts as regional banks withdrew reserves from New York City banks. The panic then extended across the nation as vast numbers of people withdrew deposits from their regional banks, causing the 8th-largest decline in U.S. stock market history. (Full article...)
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A branch of the Coastal Federal Credit Union in Raleigh, North Carolina
Worldwide, credit union systems vary significantly in their total assets and average institution asset size, ranging from volunteer operations with a handful of members to institutions with hundreds of thousands of members and assets worth billions of US dollars. In 2018, the number of members in credit unions worldwide was 375 million, with over 100 million members having been added since 2016. (Full article...)
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The CAMELS rating is a supervisory rating system originally developed in the U.S. to classify a bank's overall condition. It is applied to every bank and credit union in the U.S. and is also implemented outside the U.S. by various banking supervisory regulators.
Community development bank (CDB) or Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) is a development bank or credit union that focus on serving people who have been locked out of the traditional financial systems such as the unbanked or underbanked in deprived local communities. They emphasize the long term development of communities and provide loans such as micro-finance or venture capital.
In the United States these became popular after 1994 when the US Congress created community development banks and allowed them to get funding at very low rates from the US treasury. (Full article...)
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Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. 212 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.
The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard oral arguments in the case in January 2016, releasing their opinion in April 2016. A 6–2 majority found that § 8772 was not unconstitutional, because it "changed the law by establishing new substantive standards"—essentially, that if Iran owns the assets, they would be available for execution against judgments against Iran—for the district court to apply to the case. JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, explained that the federal judiciary has long upheld laws that affect one or a very small number of subjects as a valid exercise of Congress' legislative power and that the Supreme Court had previously upheld a statute that applied to cases identified by docket number in Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Society (1992). The majority also upheld § 8772 as a valid exercise of Congress' authority over foreign affairs. Prior to the enactment of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) in 1976, Congress and the Executive branch had authority to determine the immunity of foreign states from lawsuits. Despite transferring the authority to determine immunity to the courts through the FSIA, the majority contended that "it remains Congress' prerogative to alter a foreign state's immunity." (Full article...)
Chemical's logo, adopted from Manufacturers Hanover after the banks' merger
Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world.
The ING Group (Dutch: ING Groep) is a Dutch multinationalbanking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, wholesale banking, private banking, asset management, and insurance services. With total assets of US$967.8 billion, it is one of the biggest banks in the world, and consistently ranks among the largest banks globally.
Barclays plc (/ˈbɑːrkliz/, occasionally /-leɪz/) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services.
Barclays traces its origins to the goldsmith banking business established in the City of London in 1690. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736. In 1896, twelve banks in London and the English provinces, including Goslings Bank, Backhouse's Bank and Gurney, Peckover and Company, united as a joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades, Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank. In 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first cash dispenser. Barclays has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including of London, Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918, British Linen Bank in 1919, Mercantile Credit in 1975, the Woolwich in 2000 and the North American operations of Lehman Brothers in 2008. (Full article...)
It was the first building society in the United Kingdom to demutualise, doing so in July 1989. The bank expanded through a number of acquisitions in the 1990s, including James Hay, Scottish Mutual, Scottish Provident and the rail leasing company Porterbrook. Abbey National launched an online bank, Cahoot, in June 2000. (Full article...)
CGD now has presence in 23 countries spanning four continents through branches, representative offices or direct equity interests in local financial institutions. CGD is the largest Portuguese financial group, with the highest domestic market shares in key areas such as customer deposits, loans and advances to customers, mortgages, insurance, mutual funds and real estate leasing (11.4%). Based on assets, it ranks 109 in terms of the world’s major banks. CGD is the 69th largest European bank. (Full article...)
Shinhan Bank started as a small enterprise with a capital stock of KRW 25.0 billion, 279 employees, and three branches on July 7, 1982. Today, it has transformed itself into a large bank, boasting total assets of KRW 176.9 trillion, equity capital of KRW 9.7 trillion, 10,741 employees, and 1,026 branches as of 2006. As of June 30, 2016, Shinhan Bank had total assets of ₩298.945 trillion (equivalent to ₩304.658 trillion or US$269.507 billion in 2017)[1] , total deposits of ₩221.047 trillion (equivalent to ₩225.271 trillion or US$199.28 billion in 2017)[1] and loans of ₩212.228 trillion (equivalent to ₩216.283 trillion or US$191.329 billion in 2017)[1]. Shinhan Bank is the main subsidiary of Shinhan Financial Group (SFG). (Full article...)
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The Bank of France (French: Banque de France, the name used by the bank to refer to itself in all English communications) is the French member of the Eurosystem. It was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 as a private-sector corporation with unique public status. It was granted note-issuance monopoly in Paris in 1803 and in the entire country in 1848, issuing the French franc. Charles de Gaulle's government nationalized the bank in 1945 after several governance changes in the meantime. It remained France's sole monetary authority until end-1998, when France adopted the euro as its currency.
The Bank of France long held high prestige as an anchor of financial stability, especially before the monetary turmoil that followed World War I. In 1907, Italian economist and statesman Luigi Luzzatti referred to the Bank of France as "the centre of the world's monetary power." (Full article...)
ABC has 320 million retail customers, 2.7 million corporate clients, and nearly 24,000 branches. It is China's third-largest lender by assets. ABC went public in mid-2010, fetching the world's biggest ever initial public offering (IPO) at the time, since overtaken by the Saudi Arabianstate-runpetroleum enterprise, Saudi Aramco. In 2011, it ranked eighth among the Top 1000 World Banks, by 2015, it ranked third in Forbes' 13th annual Global 2000 list and in 2017 it ranked fifth. In 2023, Agricultural Bank of China was ranked #4 in Forbes' Global 2000 (World's Largest Public Companies). It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. (Full article...)
Image 11Statesman Jan van den Brink was instrumental in the merger of Amsterdamsche Bank and Rotterdamsche Bank in 1964, and remained on the bank's board until 1978 (from AMRO Bank)
Image 12Carved sign for The Standard Bank of Canada, in Brechin, Ontario. (from Standard Bank of Canada)
Image 13Sealing of the Bank of England Charter (1694), by Lady Jane Lindsay, 1905. (from Bank)
Image 14Branch of Nepal Bank in Pokhara, Western Nepal. (from Bank)