Mubasher: Saudi and Emirati banks had the most entries in Forbes Middle East’s Top 50 Banks in The Middle East list for 2021 with 10 financial institutions each.
Qatar National Bank topped the region’s listed banks with profits of $3.3 billion and sales worth $13.5 billion, according to a press release on Wednesday.
The UAE’s First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) was the second in the list with sales and profits totalling $7.6 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively.
Saudi National Bank (SNB), which is a result of merging the National Commercial Bank (NCB) and Samba Financial Group, came in the third place with sales worth $6.6 billion and profits standing at $3.1 billion.
The list featured the Middle East’s listed banks based on sales, profits, assets, and market value. The 50 banks in the list had a total value of $513.6 billion and assets worth $2.5 trillion.
Qatar followed Saudi Arabia and the UAE with eight entries, while Kuwait and Bahrain had six and five banks, respectively, included in the list. Oman and Morocco followed with four and three entries, while Egypt and Jordan had two banks each.
The Middle East listed banks reduce competition and increase their expertise through recent merger transactions executed to create larger banking groups.
In 2019, ADCB merged with Union National Bank and Al Hilal Bank to form the ADCB Group, which is the UAE’s third largest bank.
In 2020, Dubai Islamic Bank, which was already the largest Islamic bank in the Emirates, merged with Noor Bank.
And in March 2021, Saudi’s NCB announced a merger with Samba, which will create one of the region’s most valuable banks.
Earlier this month, Forbes Middle East revealed that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have also dominated the annual ranking of the top 100 listed companies for 2021, with 37 and 20 companies, respectively.
