Where has all the money gone?

The following revealing paragraph is from an article by Bill Jamieson in The Scotsman today, linked here: The scale of the catastrophe suggests no early return to what might be described as "normal" in UK banking. Between April last year and April 7 this year, the market capitalisation of the UK banking sector collapsed from £316.9bn to £138.1bn. Within this total, Royal Bank of Scotland has slumped from £62.8bn to £17.2bn. Northern Rock went from £4.8bn to nothing. Bradford & Bingley went from £2.9bn to nothing. Barclays tumbled from £47.1bn to £14.3bn. HBOS went from £39.3bn to merge with Lloyds Banking Group, and Lloyds itself fell from £31.6bn to £12.9bn. Bearing in mind that nine banks occupied places in the FTSE 100 Index in April last year, the effect has been felt by every small private investor in a FTSE 100 index tracker unit trust.