British group leading ranking for 100 largest European banks - The French daily Les Echos each year publishes a list of the top European banks on the basis of statistics from the FITCH grading agency. The 1999 ranking, published in the 6 and 7 July editions of the French daily, contains seventeen countries as opposed to last year's fifteen, Luxembourg and Norway making their entry. Germany is heavily represented with 28 establishments, followed by the United Kingdom (14 Banks), Italy (9), France (8), Denmark (4), the Netherlands (4), Portugal (4), Sweden (4), Switzerland (4), Austria (3), Norway (3), Belgium (2), Ireland (2), Finland (1), Greece (1) and Luxembourg (1). Three bi-national groups are also present: - DEXIA (Belgium/Netherlands), MEDITANORDBANKEN (Finland/Sweden) and FORTIS (Belgium/Netherlands). The group where chosen in relation to size criteria (total balance sheet), by eliminating the banks controlled by others, then ranked according to their performance, i.e the return on equity, studied today, and their performance ratio, analysed tomorrow. From this ranking we can notably see that: i) the economic situation and the recovery of the financial markets have allowed European banks to make record profits in 1999. In fact 26 banks post net profits above EUR 1 billion against 21 last year; ii) The British banks still dominate the ranking with 9 of them represented in the top 20 in terms of RoE; iii) the HYPOVEREINSBANK brutally fell from the 25th to 29th place; iv) all the French banks are moving up, in particular the SOCIETE GENERALE went from 69th to 28th place; v) the three last places are occupied by RAIFFEISEN ZENTRALBANK (Germany; 98th place; net profits of EUR 29 million), HAMBURGISCHE LANDESBANK (Denmark; 99th; EUR 77 million) and LANDESBANK SACHSEN GIROZENTRALE (Denmark; 100th; EUR 13 million).