China's ICBC emerges as world's biggest bank

The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world's largest lender by market value, has said it has 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 on 31 March 2009, after increasing by 950 billion yuan from the start of the year, the Beijing-based lender said in a statement. Including deposits from financial companies, the figure amounted to 9.78 trillion yuan ($1.43 trillion), it said.

The latest milestone underlines how Chinese banks have emerged relatively unscathed from the global crisis to become the largest and most profitable lenders in the world while western peers they used to try to emulate have been humbled.
 
It also highlights the growing affluence of Chinese citizens, who have historically saved a large portion of their incomes rather than relying on credit.

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.