I was just poring over a list of Asian bank stocks and was left dazed. It was a list of the top 100 Asian banks by market capitalization and I decided to strip out the Japanese and Australians and look at the remaining Asian banks.
There were 38 banks left, and these numbered Asian powerhouses such as DBS, State Bank of India, Hang Seng Bank, Bangkok Bank, HCB and Maybank. Basically, if you controlled these 38 banks you would pretty much dominate every economy in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan and China.
What was striking was their combined market cap. It added up to a mere $135.7 billion. To put that in perspective,...
