The three largest U.S. banks are set to control nearly a third of the nation's retail market share, according to data released Monday by SNL Financial.
Bank of America Corp. held $719.8 billion of U.S. deposits, followed by Wells Fargo & Co. at $711.5 billion and JPMorgan Chase & Co. at $649.3 billion. All three surpassed the 10% national market share threshold, with B of A at 11.31%, Wells at 11.18% (including the deposits it would gain by acquiring Wachovia Corp.), and JPMorgan Chase at 10.20%.
A year ago the three banking companies held just under 23% of the country's deposits. SNL said "the recent spate of bank acquisitions and failures has led to significant industry consolidation, increasing market share of the top banks." Wells would more than double its market share and have the most branches nationally, 6,779, after closing the Wachovia deal. Retail deposits overall rose 3.72%, to $6.364 trillion, in the past year, SNL said. That was slightly better than last year's growth of 2.54% but much lower than the 7.88% in 2005 and the 7.84% in 2006.
The rankings are based on SNL's analysis of deposit data from more than 99,000 branches of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured institutions, including pending and completed mergers.
