banking: The Bank That Ate the World

After a huge expansion in mature markets, HSBC is speeding efforts to tap the pocketbooks of the new èlite developing throughout the globe

Scotman Thomas Sutherland, a manager at a shipping company, wisely recognized the profits to be had in the burgeoning trade in a developing market like China. The bank he helped start, Hongkong and Shanghai, now called HSBC, became one of China's top financial institutions within just a few years of its founding. That was in 1865.

Today history is going full circle. The London-based megabank--the world's second largest bank by market value in mid-January--is returning to its roots. China, the world's fastest-growing economy, is the hottest market in global finance, sending international banks on a mad scramble for acquisitions and customers.

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