HONG KONG (Bloomberg) ? HSBC Holdings Plc will expand faster in the Americas and Asia than in the lender?s home base of Europe over the coming ten years, chairman Stephen Green said.

HSBC, Europe?s biggest bank by market value, yesterday reported first-half net income climbed to $8.73 billion from $7.6 billion. Revenue at the London-based bank rose 15 percent to $34.3 billion, led by gains in investment banking and corporate lending. The firm is making a big push into investment banking, Green said in an interview in Hong Kong today.

The bank spent more than $28 billion in the past four years on acquisitions in the US, Latin America and China, tapping countries where growth is faster than in the UK. About 81 percent of HSBC?s first-half pretax profit was generated outside Britain, the company said.

?We would expect Asia to expand faster than the total, and we probably expect the Americas to expand faster than the total,? Green said.

The bank?s emerging-markets operations recorded a 23 percent growth in pretax profit for the first six months of the year, reaching $2.25 billion, about 18 percent of the group total. Among HSBC?s leading markets was China, which recorded 74 percent growth to reach $280 million in pretax profit, while Middle East profits grew 85 percent to $378 million.

Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp. was founded in 1865 to finance trade between China and Europe. HSBC now has about 9,500 offices, according to its Web site.

HSBC plans to hire 1,000 people to expand its operations in China and may hire 1,000 more in 2007, Peter Wong, director of Hong Kong and China, said on a conference call yesterday.

The lender will keep investing in China, focusing on providing ?premier banking? through HSBC?s own outlets and on its ventures with Bank of Communications Ltd. and Ping An Insurance Group, Green said yesterday.

HSBC agreed on July 21 to buy Grupo Banistmo SA, Panama?s largest bank, for $1.77 billion to enter five countries in Latin America. The acquisition allowed the bank to strengthen its position in an area with 85 million people, said Green. That includes Panama, as well as Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Columbia.

HSBC also has started a programme to grow its business in Eastern Europe and Russia, Green said. The initiative, led by Guy Hamilton, Jersey, Channel Islands-based head of HSBC International, will focus on branch and business growth, rather than buying market share through acquisitions.

?Our presence is relatively small in that area for historical reasons,? Green, 57, said. ?I don?t think it?s too late to grow your business organically, with direct banking, some commercial banking, through focused branch presence and consumer finance.?

In the UK and US, HSBC has seen a deterioration in the quality of credit at its consumer finance business, Green said.

Green, who took over from Sir John Bond in May, oversaw an expansion of securities trading and investment banking. Profit at the division jumped 37 percent in the first half, helped by rising stock markets and a mergers and acquisitions boom.

?Our investment banking business is part of a much wider franchise,? Green said. ?We are there for the lending, the transaction banking. We have the footprint in 77 countries. This is the kind of proposition that no stand-alone Wall Street house can offer.?

The expansion of the investment-banking business, run by Stuart Gulliver, 47, and his former co-head John Studzinski, 50, boosted costs and contributed to a drop in pretax earnings at the unit last year. HSBC in May said cost growth had ?peaked? last year at the securities unit.

Studzinski added about 1,400 people to the corporate and investment bank last year and led HSBC to advise clients including German utility E.ON AG on its $46 billion offer for Spain?s Endesa SA. He quit in May to join Blackstone Group LP, three months after the company gave his underwriting responsibilities to Gulliver.

HSBC shares have gained three percent this year, giving the company a market value of about $206 billion. By that measure, HSBC is the world?s third-largest financial company after New York-based Citigroup Inc. and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp.

Return on equity, a gauge of how well the bank reinvests earnings, rose to 18.1 percent in the first half from 17.6 percent a year earlier, HSBC said.

That compares with a second- quarter return on equity of 18.6 percent at Citigroup and 17.3 percent at Bank of America.