Banking's top ten credit crunch losers revealed

The ten financial firms which have been hardest hit by write-downs and other losses since the onset of the credit crunch have been identified by The Economist.

Citigroup took the number one spot in the "hall of shame" chart, with losses of $54.6 billion from August 9th 2007 to the present.

Wall Street rival Merrill Lynch and Zurich-based UBS took second and third spots, taking $51.8 and $38.2 billion hits respectively.

At fourth on the list, HSBC was the highest-ranked firm not to have replaced its chief executive.

This is partially explained by overall falls in share prices over recent month: while the other three banks sparked investor ire by all losing around 60 per cent of value, Europe's largest bank lost just six per cent.

HSBC "has taken heavy losses but is strongly capitalised and well diversified," the Economist commented.

"Firing people does not guarantee success…but it ought to be the price of failure."

The magazine compiled its list by using data from Bloomberg, Thomson Datastream and company reports.