Over the weekend the New York Times had a special package on the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, which happened a year ago tomorrow. There was a graphic showing the market capitalization of the major players in the finance industry at its peak, at the trough, and as of today.
The peak for these financial companies was October 9, 2007, shortly before the recession began. At that point, there were 13 financial corporations with markets caps exceeding $50 billion, ranging from Citigroup at $236.7 billion to Bank of New York Mellon at $51.8 billion. At the lowest point of the market, March 9, 2009, there was only one such banking concern worth $50 billion: JPMorgan Chase, at $59.8 billion.
As of last week, the banking business had rallied to the point where there are now five firms with that $50 billion market cap. A lot of that is because of consolidation: JPMorgan Chase, still the largest although now at $167.1 billion, snapped up Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns. The other four are Bank of America ($146.8 billion), Wells Fargo ($128.1 billion), Citigroup ($105.5 billion) and Goldman Sachs ($91.8 billion).
In all, at the market peak, the financial sector held 20.4 percent of the value of the stock market. At the bottom, it was down to 11.8 percent, and now it's back up to 16.6 percent: an impressive rebound, but not back to full health yet, especially considering the market itself is still only at 65 percent of its peak value.
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