RIA-Analitika’s Center for Economic Analysis experts did a research on the banking systems of the countries of the CIS on the basis of the official banking statistics data and the bank’s reports available from the public sources. In the end, the experts produced a rating of the Commonwealth’s top hundred largest banks (in terms of asset volume as of January 1, 2011). As a matter of fact, Georgia’s banks are featured in the rating, even though this country left the Commonwealth of Independent States two years ago.

Five member states turned out not to have banks whose asset volume would be sufficient for the rating, so the final Top100 rating featured banks from seven states: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia. Predictably enough, Russia tops the rating: the CIS nine largest banks are based in Russia.

All in all, the rating featured sixty-nine Russian banks, fifteen Ukrainian ones, eight Kazakh ones, five Byelorussian ones, and one bank from each of the following countries: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia. Only two Urals-based banks were presented in the rating, and one (and larger) of them was SKB-Bank.