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.

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