Finance & economics | The Lehman anniversary

Five years in charts

The world of banking has changed dramatically, if not radically, in the five years since September 15th 2008, the day Lehman Brothers went bust. American and European banks used to dominate the list of the world’s biggest banks (see chart 1); the Chinese have since scaled the charts. The balance-sheets of Europe’s behemoths have got quite a bit smaller (chart 2); consolidation has made America’s giants bigger than ever. Western banks are generating much lower returns on equity than they did in the years before the crisis (chart 3), in part because the industry is being forced to fund itself with higher levels of equity than in the past (chart 4). So cost-cutting is much more important than it was: compensation ratios at investment banks have fallen (chart 5). But those who want a complete reshaping of finance can still argue that change has not gone far enough: more people work in finance in London in 2013 than did in December 2007 (chart 6).

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "Five years in charts"

Hang on

From the September 14th 2013 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

China’s banks have a bad-debt problem

As is becoming increasingly obvious

Which country will be last to escape inflation?

A new dividing line in the global fight


How the “Magnificent Seven” misleads

Forget the supergroup of stockmarket darlings