Which is the better global bank – HSBC or Citigroup? On most measures, the answer looks self-evident. Britain’s biggest bank has survived the financial crisis more or less intact, chalking up decent profits throughout. Its US rival was floored by multibillion-dollar losses, an enforced part-nationalisation and only now is toying with dividend pay-outs again.

The results for the first half of this year speak for themselves. HSBC on Monday notched up a creditable pre-tax profit of $11.5bn, a return on equity of more than 12 per cent, leaving Citi’s $8.5bn, with an ROE of barely 7 per cent, in the shade.

It is all a far cry from 2006, the last full year before the global financial crisis took hold, when Citi racked up nearly $30bn of profits and declared a 54 cent dividend for the last quarter of the year alone. That same year saw HSBC do pretty well, too, but profits were still more than 25 per cent below its US rival.