HSBC hungry to expand presence in India

The lender’s chairman is driven to choose the subcontinent above any other country.

HSBC is 'hungry' to ramp up its presence in India and is prepared to do that by expanding its existing network or buying an existing bank if allowed, its chairman Douglas Flint told ET on Wednesday.

Flint, on his first visit to India since being appointed chairman last year, said HSBC's Indian operations were the seventh biggest in its sprawling global empire and could easily move up to the top five if its ambitions were given free vent.

"If you said 'choose one country in the world that you could expand into', that would be India. (If you said) 'you can have one pick and you can do whatever you like', it would be India," Flint, a former finance director of the bank, said in his first and only interview to an Indian newspaper.

Flint said HSBC had in the last 15 years made large investments in emerging markets such as Latin America and in China, but a larger presence in India continues to elude the world's third most valuable and Europe's biggest bank. "We have not had the opportunities to make major investments in Indiaâ...We are hungry," he said.

Foreign banks have operated in India for more than a century (HSBC has been operating since 1865), but their operations have been subjected to tight controls on how much and where they can expand. HSBC's market value, at around $190 billion, is five times that of State Bank of India, but in India, the London-based bank is a minnow in terms of market share.

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