The data describes the leading banks in Europe as of the end of 2017, ranked by total assets. Total assets is one of the main measures of a bank's prosperity, and is defined as all assets owned by a bank. This includes, but is not limited to; cash and balances, loans and advances to banks and customers, as well as debt securities. It can be seen that the London headquartered HSBC Holdings PLC was the biggest bank in Europe at the end of 2017, with total assets amounting to approx. 2.1 trillion euro. The leading fifteen banks included four UK banks, five French banks, two Italian banks, one Swiss bank as well as one bank each from Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
