Crisis costs American and European banks 1300 billion dollars. According to the news agency Reuters, European and American banks have so far lost 1300 billion dollars since 2007. These losses were registered mainly in 2008 and 2009, in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This stratospheric amount, which covers provisions for unsecured loans and depreciation of assets, is still less than the 2185 billion dollars forecast by the International Monetary Fund in May, when it predicted that the European banks alone would lose 1300 billion. The worst-hit establishments are, by some margin, the Anglo-Saxon banks, led by a trio made up of two American banks, Citigroup and Bank of America, plus Lloyds of the UK. While American banks are the worst affected, accounting for half of all losses, British banks have particularly suffered from the crisis, to the tune of 270 billion dollars. Among the “Top10” biggest losers are two banks which have since folded: Wachovia, which was bought by Wells Fargo in late 2008, and Merrill Lynch, which was absorbed in early 2009 by Bank of America, which had already taken over another struggling establishment, Countrywide, a year earlier. These purchases worsened the impact of the financial crisis on their bottom line in 2009 and again in 2010. It was a similar scenario for Lloyds, which purchased HBOS in January 2009, and for JP Morgan, which bought Bear Stearns in March 2008 and Washington Mutual in September. In continental Europe, Switzerland's UBS has seen the greatest losses (52.5 billion). The following table represents the “Top10” biggest bank losses resulting from the crisis, including banks which have been purchased or which collapsed in 2008/2009 (marked with a *). Here follows the classification by depreciation of assets plus provisions for unsecured loans (2007-2010), in billions of dollars: 1) Citigroup (147.2 billion); 2) Bank of America (104.4 billion); 3) Lloyds (82.1 billion); 4) Wachovia (*) (77.4 billion); 5) HSBC (76.0 billion); 6) Merrill Lynch (*) (63.7 billion); 7) RBS (63.3 billion); 8) JP Morgan Chase (62.8 billion); 9) UBS (52.5 billion); 10) Fannie Mae (47.0 billion dollars). (I.L./transl.fl)