ICBC fell from top spot as world's biggest lender

With an annual 7.6 percent decline, Chinese stock market has emerged as one of the biggest losers across the globe in 2013, knocking Chinese biggest banks off their top ranks at the beginning of the year. Hong Kong stocks, meanwhile, have nudged up by only 2.6 percent, compared with a rally of 25.75 percent in U.S. stock market.

As a result, Chinese banks including the top four biggest state-owned banks, have to surrender their leading spots in the world's ranking to their global peers especially those from the United States.

The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, with a market value of 213.7 billion U.S. dollars ending Monday, fell to the fourth place from the previous top spot, trailing behind Berkshire Hathaway Inc (291.1 billion), Wells Fargo Bank (239.7 billion) and JPMorgan Chase (236.4 billion), according to Bloomberg calculations.

The Chinese lender surpassed Citigroup in July 2007 to become the world's biggest bank. Its six-year reign had been interrupted only once when it was eclipsed by HSBC Holdings PLC in September 2008, if not taking into account of recent ups and downs since June this year.

The bank's market value had slipped to below that of rival Wells Fargo during June's credit crunch, where seven-day repo rate soared to historical highs, before reclaiming the first spot.

As financial strains continued at the end of year, however, ICBC was again surpassed by Wells Fargo, as well as JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

That was in spite of the fact that the Chinese bank earned the most globally in the third quarter, with a net profit of 11.2 billion U.S. dollars compared with Wells Fargo's 5.58 billion.

China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China were also ranked among the top nine earlier this year, Bloomberg data showed. But the CCB fell to sixth in the world ranking and other two banks were knocked off the top ten spots ending December 30.