Bigger is better – but it also evokes trepidation. In the second half of the 1980s, as Japan’s stock market capitalisation closed in on Wall Street’s, many feared that Japan was going to buy everything in sight. Its banks, in particular, had become enormous. By the end of that decade, the top five global banks by total assets were Japanese, led by Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank.

It is hard not to be reminded of this as China assumes the role of record breaker. On Monday, according to Reuters calculations, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China briefly became the world’s biggest bank by market cap, overtaking Citigroup. While glasses will be raised in Beijing – and eyebrows raised in the west – obsessing about market caps often distracts from more useful measures of financial performance. After all, ICBC has assumed the number one spot less through management skill than by being born into a frenzied Shanghai stock market backed by a booming Chinese economy. It is still outside the top five ranked by tier-one capital, which largely comprises of book equity – by that measure, Bank of America is number one. ICBC is second to UBS by total assets.