BRITISH HSBC BANK BEST IN WORLD

Noyan Tapan

Au gust 1, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 1, NOYAN TAPAN. HSBC Bank has risen from third to first
place on the list of best thousand banks of the world, according to
the results of the annual study of The Banker magazine. Since 1999,
HSBC has been the first non-American orhanization to top that list
by the indices of its overall capital and pre-tax profit which were
record ones last year.

To recap, in April HSBC also topped Forbes’ list of biggest 2,000
companies of the world. It became the first non-American organization
to reach such success and to succeed in ensuring 26% growth of annual
incomes and 31% growth of net profit in the past 5 years.

HSBC Holding services over 128 million customers through its 10
thousand offices located in about 84 countries in Europe, Asia, Pacific
region, North and South America, the Middle East. HSBC’s assets made
2 trillion 354 billion USD as of December 31, 2007. The bank is one of
the biggest companies of banking and financial services of the world.

HSBC Bank Armenia also registered record indices in 2007. That year
the bank’s assets grew by 30% and made 104 billion drams (about 337.4
million USD) and by this index the bank took a leading place among 22
commercial banks of Armenia. Crediting grew by 70%, incomes – by 24%
and made 9.16 billion drams in late 2007, while after-tax profit grew
by 5.4% and made 3.3 billion drams.

The share of HSBC Bank Armenia made 32% in the country’s mortgage
market and 26% in the deposit attraction market. Among the bank’s
customers are 40 thousand natural persons and 3.6 thousand legal
entities.