2010 - A Year Of Banking Dangerously

From recovery in Asia to hot growth in Latin America to seemingly near-collapse in Europe, it is a yeoman's task to try to sum up the 2010 world of international banking in under 800 words. Perhaps, though, that is the summation; Asia came back, Latin America never left and Europe struggled to hang on through the latest crisis. Suffice it to say, it sets the table for an interesting 2011. 

Asia - Been There, Done That, Learned the Lesson
To some extent, it is probably fair to say that between Japan's property bubble-fueled bank bubble and collapse (and a 20-year zombie economy), Hong Kong's boom-bust real estate markets and Southeast Asia's debt-fueled over-expansion of past decades, Asian bankers had already seen this movie before. Consequently, while the decline of global trade during the Great Recession did no favors for these economies, the underlying models were in better shape and 2010 saw good rebounds in many markets. (For more, see 7 Ways To Position Yourself For Recovery.)

Publicly-traded Korean banks like KB Financial (NYSE:KB) and Woori (NYSE:WF) lagged the U.S. S&P 500 (Shinhan (NYSE:SHG) outperformed), but were still up for the year and did quite a bit better than American banks on the whole. Japanese banks like Mitsubishi UFJ (NYSE:MTU) and Mizuho (NYSE:MFG) were likewise "yeah, but" performers - yeah, they did better than most American banks, but still not all that well.

Elsewhere in Asia, there was substantially better performance. Indian wonder twins ICICI (NYSE:IBN) and HDFC (NYSE:HDB) were strong stocks this year, as was Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (Nasdaq: ANZBY.PK). While China's efforts to cool inflation impacted the likes of China Construction Bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank, and Bank of China, the share price performance still holds up relative to many regional U.S. banks.


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