World financial crisis allowed Russian banks to increase by one third its presence in the top of the world's leading banks in the world, made up by the "The Banker" magazine. Among the 1000 biggest banks according to their capital 35 are Russian.

Despite the crisis, the number of banks, claiming the statute of largest in the world, is growing.

To head the list of "The Banker" capital of over 100 billion dollars is needed, and to enter the top-1000 - more than 250 million dollars. The first amount is currently beyond Russian banks' strength, but the second has been crossed by 35 banks at the end of the last year.

At the end of 2006 their number in the top of the biggest was 27. Practically all have stabilized their positions.

"Sberbank" has doubled its capital to 25.3 billion dollars and has climbed from 66th to 33rd place. VTB (15.6 billion dollars) as well as Sberbank, having issued more shares, has climbed from 116th to 60th place. Along with "Gazprombank" (7.6 billion dollars, 112th place) they comprise the three biggest banks in Eastern Europe.

Among the hundred banks, made the biggest jump, nine are Russian, as five of them fall among the first 20. Strengthening of the position of Russian banks is due to that they have been affected less by the financial crisis, said the director of the department for operations on financial markets "Nomos-Bank" Vasily Fyodorov.

Difficulties in attracting funds from abroad are partly offset by internal resources that come from energy exports. The rate of business growth (35-40% per year) has helped the Russian banks to extend their presence in the rating.

The last year's leader in the rating "Bank of America" lost 8.4% of its own resources and with a result of 83.4 billion dollars has dropped to fifth place. The new leader is the British HSBC, which has increased its capital by 19.5% to 105 billion dollars.

The crisis has brought losses to another American giant - "Citigroup". It, despite the reduction of its capital by 1.8% to 89.2 billion dollars has kept its second position, and in the third place with an increase of 1.5 to 88.9 billion dollars has become Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

RBS headed a consortium by banks, which acquired the Dutch "ABN Amro". Even more impressive is the assets growth of RBS - 2.2 times to 3.8 trillion dollars, which enabled it to become the biggest bank in the world on this indicator. UBS was the previous leader.

But the reduction of assets of the Swiss Bank by 5.2% to 2 trillion dollars left it in eighth place. Last year the banking system was growing unevenly, noted the Vice President of Moody's Yaroslav Sovgir. In the first half was recorded fast growth of assets over the capital, because the access to loan resources was easy. And the risk covered by capital, was assessed as low. When the market became volatile, access to resources was complicated, that's why the growth of balance sheets has slowed down. It was not until this year when banks began to increase their capital at the expense of issuing of new shares and convertible instruments.