Riding high The big winner from the financial crisis

AS THE dust settles on an extraordinary period of financial tumult, which reached its zenith five years ago this week with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, two banks vie for the title of the world’s biggest by market capitalisation. One is Wells Fargo, a San Francisco-based institution; the other is China’s state-owned ICBC. It says something about the state of global finance that both are largely domestic, conventional lenders, and that both are buoyed and buffeted by the policies of their respective governments.