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Luisa Vieira

The Graphic Truth: Who holds the most global wealth?

Swiss authorities are investigating the mega-acquisition of Credit Suisse, the country's second-largest bank, by UBS, its largest. The deal, worth a measly $3.5 billion, would reportedly make UBS the world's top bank wealth manager, with over $4 trillion in assets under management.

Both Credit Suisse and UBS manage assets that are well beyond their institutional size because they are mostly global banks that invest on behalf of wealthy global clients. But the merger won’t turn them into one of the world’s biggest banks by assets – the size of what a bank has on its balance sheet.

If a bank goes belly up, what's vulnerable are not the assets but rather the deposits, which are normally insured by governments up to a certain limit, and the role of managing investments can easily be taken over by another wealth manager. We take a look at the world's top five banks by overall assets compared to the amount of wealth they invest for their clients.

Students from the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., hold hands after getting off a bus to meet their parents at the reunification site following a mass shooting.

Reuters

Hard Numbers: Nashville school shooting, Rohingya flee to Indonesia, Deutsche disruption, America’s tumbling tolerance, white-collar AI wipeout

6: Six people, including three young children and three adults, were killed on Monday at the Covenant School, a private Christian primary school in Nashville, Tenn. Audrey Hale, a former student, was identified as the shooter. The 28-year-old was shot and killed by police during the attack, the 130th mass shooting in the US this year.

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