OREANDA-NEWS. June 30, 2014. In the Bloomberg Markets Magazine’s rankings of the world’s strongest banks, SEB Group placed 9th in the globally and 3rd in Europe. Compared to 2013, the bank’s placing in the overall rankings improved by five positions.

On Bloomberg’s list of the 20 strongest banks, the Hong Kong-based Hang Seng Bank came first, followed by Desjardins Group of Canada with Norinchukin Bank of Japan in third. In Europe, Bloomberg named Bayerische Landesbank the strongest bank, ranking Pohjola Bank of Finland second.

Eight banks from Europe and Asia, four from North America and one from the Middle East made the list.

Of European banks, Svenska Handelsbanken (11th) and Swedbank (14th) of Sweden, UBS (12th) of Switzerland, and Unicredit (16th) and Deutsche Bank (20th) of Germany made it into the 20 strongest banks.

Bloomberg compared banks whose assets amount to at least 100 billion dollars, examining the ratio of core capital to risk-weighted exposure amounts, the proportion of impaired loans in all assets, loan reserves as compared to impaired assets, and the ratio of deposits to loans and the rates of return thereon.