Probably many of you already know that Apple recently had a market capitalization value of over 352 billion dollars, everything being calculated based on the value of the company's shares on the American stock market plus a few other factors. Of course, this value of the stock market capitalization does not represent the real value of the company, but it is an important indicator for investors. Having said that, some of the biggest banks in the Eurozone, 32 in total, have a market capitalization value of just over 340 billion dollars, that is, about 10 billion dollars less than that of Apple.
Technology company Apple is now worth as much as the 32 biggest euro zone banks. That's the stark result from a steep fall in the share price of banks including Spain's Santander, France's BNP Paribas, Germany's Deutsche Bank and Italy's Unicredit, compared to a steady rise in Apple's valuation, according to Thomson Reuters data. Earlier on Friday the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fell 4 percent, valuing its 32 members at $340 billion. That's based on the market capitalization of their free-float shares, which for some French banks in particular is less than 100 percent.
Among the banks that are part of this group are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Unicredit Italia plus several other important banks, but in the case of some French banks, the entire value of the shares was not taken into account. Comparisons like this help investors make semi-prepared moves on the world's stock markets, but in reality the stock market capitalization matters less for a company considering that in the case of a sale, the purchase price will almost always be lower than the capitalization.
