Content area
Full Text
Headnote
Global Finance selects the World's Safest Banks, the 50 institutions with the highest ratings from the leading international credit ratings agencies.
A single downgrade from a single ratings agency has been enough to knock the perennial leader in the Global Finance World's Safest Banks rankings off its top spot this year. After years at the top of the table, the Netherlands' Rabobank has fallen to fifth place. The new safest bank is regular runner-up, Germany's Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg, whose jump in assets from $253 billion last year to more than $327 billion this year helped it leap to the top of the heap.
Many of the German banks, however, may find this is their next-to-last appearance in the...