CIO 100 COMPANIES IN Financial Services

3. Royal Bank of Scotland Group

The Royal Bank of Scotland has maintained its position near the top of the CIO 100 ranking during the past year despite these trying economic times.

9. Lloyds TSB Group

Lloyds TSB is set to merge with HBOS to create a banking giant as the financial sector faces difficulties following on from the collapse of Leman Brothers in the US. The merger, which the government is likely to approve will create wide ranging redundancies. Perhaps by virtue of its size and having only the UK as its key market, making it the fifth largest banking group in the UK, Lloyds TSB Group has felt comparatively less growth pains in the midst of increasing global economic instability. With revenues of £16.9 billion last year, it still registered a balance-sheet item termed a "revaluation reserve reduction" of £740 million that was bigger than the £667 million sub-prime related losses charged against profit.

10. HBOS

HBOS is set to merge with Lloyds TSB to create a banking giant as the financial sector faces difficulties following on from the collapse of Leman Brothers in the US. The merger, which the government is likely to approve will create wide ranging redundancies Just before news of the merger leaked, HBOS said in its most recent trading update that, while it has not been immune to the wider economic and credit conditions, the UK's largest mortgage and savings provider was on track to demonstrate a “resilient performance in 2008”. Not bad for a bank in its tenth year as a listed company.

16. HSBC

With assets of some $2,354 billion (£1,283 billion) at 31 December 2007, HSBC Holdings is Europe’s biggest bank by market value. Serving over 128 million customers worldwide through around 10,000 offices in 83 countries, it is not surprising it has felt the affects of the seismic shifts in the global economy that have affected so many of the other financial services companies featured in this year’s CIO 100 listing.

18. Barclays

Barclays is one of the ‘big four’ UK financial services providers, with retail, commercial and investment banking, credit cards and wealth and investment management businesses, serving 30 million customers in over 50 countries.

19. Deloitte & Touche LLP

For financial services firm Deloitte it has been a year in IT of continuation. The partnership said: “In terms of changes to business IT strategy it was mainly a continuation of the projects identified in 2007 - for example the completion of VoIP, completing the roll out of Document Management, and working on the green agenda.”

31. Reuters

No sooner had the information services company, Reuters announced the results of a successful three-year business recovery programme, than it had new challenges to keep it busy. In May 2007, UK-based Reuters agreed to merge with one of the world’s largest information companies, the Thomson Corporation in a deal valued at $17.2 billion (£8.7 billion). Canadian firm, Thomson now controls about 53 per cent of the new company, named Thomson Reuters.

34. KPMG LLP

Consultancy KPMG is in the middle of establishing a combined limited liability partnership which will run across Europe. This is leading to major software upgrades which the firm is focusing on SAP and Microsoft.

48. Aviva

With a history stretching back over 300 years, today Aviva has 45 million customers in 27 countries, making it the world’s fifth largest insurance group and the largest in the UK. Trading under brands including Norwich Union and RAC brands in the UK, the company has seen its life, savings and investment sales fall in recent months.

52. Nationwide Building Society

Nationwide is the world’s largest building society and in August 2007 it got a little larger when it completed the acquisition of Portman Building Society. The enlarged society has over 900 retail outlets and around 14 million members. The last set of accounts showed it had underlying total revenue from retail and other sectors of £2.2bn and underlying profit before tax up 17 per cent to £781.1 million.

61. JP Morgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase is a global financial services firm with operations in more than 50 countries. The organisation is a conglomerate formed as a result of years of mergers with different banks, including what a decade ago were five of New York’s largest.

64. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Worldwide, PwC audits over 30 per cent of the Global 500 biggest companies and 33 per cent of the FT Europe 500, and in its last financial year the company saw its total revenues shoot up over 10.5 per cent to over $25bn (£13bn).

93. Royal & SunAlliance

RSA - the new name for Royal & Sun Alliance - is an international insurance and financial services firm. In April 2007 RSA announced two major IT outsourcing deals, shaking up existing arrangements.

95. Standard Life Group

Standard Life IT operations in Canada and Germany, which currently have their own autonomous IT teams, will come under the remit of a group IT department in the near future.

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