The Worlds Top 10 Banks

Shashikant S K

JP Morgan Chase & Co is a leading global financial services firm with operations in more than 50 countries and has its corporate headquarters in New York City.

One of the world's oldest, largest and best-known financial institutions,

JPMorgan Chase & Co reported first-quarter 2009 net income of $2.1 billion, compared with net income of $2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2008.

Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, Credit Suisse is active in over 50 countries and employs more than 46,000 people from approximately 100 different nations.

Credit Suisse Group reported net income of *CHF 2.0 billion in the first quarter of 2009

*CHF = Swiss Franc

It was founded in 1869 by German Jewish immigrant Marcus Goldman.

The firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other major financial centres around the world.

Blackstone is a leading global alternative asset manager and provider of financial advisory services listed on the New York Stock Exchange with total fee-earnings assets under management of $92.2 billion as of March 31, 2009.

Economic net income was a loss of $93 million for the first quarter of 2009, significantly better than the loss of $827 million in the fourth quarter of 2008

Banco Santander's net attributable profit in the first quarter of 2009 was euro 2.1 billion,

Right from the start it was a bank open to the outside world, being initially linked to trade between the port of Santander in the north of Spain and Latin America.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is the largest bank in the world.

It was founded as a limited company on January 1, 1984. As of 2006, it had assets of RMB 7,055 billion ($893 billion), with over 18,000 outlets including 106 overseas branches.

Headquartered in London, Standard Chartered Bank operations in more than seventy countries and has a network of over 1,700 branches and outlets (including subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures) and employs 73,000 people.

The name Standard Chartered comes from the two original banks from which it was founded and which merged in 1969 -- The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, and The Standard Bank of British South Africa.

Rabobank opened branch offices in Europe, North America, Asia and South America and entered into strategic alliances with European partners.