HSBC chairman says hungry to expand in India: Report

Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, is hungry to ramp up its presence in fast-growing India and is open to acquisitions if allowed, the chairman told the Economic Times newspaper.

Douglas Flint also told the paper HSBC's Indian operations were already the seventh biggest in its global empire, and could easily move up to the top five if Indian authorities gave the bank a freer hand to expand. "We have not had the opportunities to make major investments in India ... So, we are hungry," the paper reported on Thursday, quoting Flint. The operations of foreign banks in India are subject to tight controls on how much and where they can expand. "If you said, choose one country in the world that you could expand into, that would be India," Flint said. "(if you said) you can have one pick and you can do whatever you like, it would be India."