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HSBC launches Russian project
HSBC is moving into retail banking in Russia, in a bid to take advantage of the country’s burgeoning middle class, which the bank said was “relatively undamaged” by the recession.
Europe’s largest bank opened its first retail branch in Moscow yesterday and is planning three more in the Russian capital and another in St. Petersburg.
Stuart Lawson, chief executive of HSBC Russia, said the country’s middle class had not suffered from a great deal of exposure to stock markets and that there was “plenty of space out there for us to grow into”.