Big is bewitching. Before the crunch, the sheer size of some institutions was an encumbrance to rational analysis. As Chuck Prince or Sir Fred Goodwin celebrated double-digit growth in assets, few observers – least of all the respective boards of Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland – had the wit or inclination to mine reams of data for structural flaws.

What, then, to make of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, now the world’s biggest bank by any metric you care to mention? No other lender comes close to the bank’s net income of $5.2bn in the first quarter. Deposits of about $1,400bn have nudged past Japan’s MUFG and JPMorgan, the bank said last week. Market capitalisation? A whisker away from $200bn. That’s 60 per cent bigger than the nearest US outfit (JPMorgan), and 11 times bigger than Citi.