TORONTO (Reuters) — As Canadian banks scan foreign markets for opportunities to set up shop, at least one big international bank is looking to win more customers in Canada.HSBC Bank Canada, a unit of HSBC Holdings Plc, is a relative minnow in Canada, with 170 offices and C$56 billion ($49 billion) in total assets. That’s about half the assets of National Bank of Canada, the smallest of the country’s Big Six domestic banks.

But HSBC Canada’s performance metrics, including 21.2 percent return on equity in the first nine months of 2006, “compare quite favourably with our competitors, and we intend to keep building on that,” chief operating officer Sean O’Sullivan said in an interview.

Management aims to post double-digit growth in 2007 by investing in information technology to improve services; growing in the commercial banking middle market, which makes up half the bank’s profit; and spending more to raise its profile.

“One of the things our research tells us is people are intrigued by us,” O’Sullivan said. “We need to build our brand awareness.”

It is tough to compete against Canadian banks in the domestic retail segment due to their size and large branch networks, he said. Some foreign banks have done a “reasonable job” competing in the corporate banking area, he said, citing U.S.-based Citigroup and Bank of America as examples.

But in the commercial middle market — which it defines as companies with more than C$20 million in sales, excluding large publicly traded corporations — HSBC Canada is the only outside lender that has made significant inroads, he said.

“We make in excess of 50 percent of our income in commercial middle-market banking,” O’Sullivan said.

Revenues from that market have grown by 15 percent to 20 percent a year, and “we think there’s significant opportunity to grow in that space,” he said.

Based in Vancouver, HSBC Bank Canada stresses its international connections and mindset to potential clients. Its London-based parent company has operations in 76 countries and territories. “My completely biased advice to a business owner would be that, if you’re doing a decent amount of imports or exports, you should at least have a conversation with HSBC to see what different perspective you would get,” O’Sullivan said.

An entrepreneur with a warehouse in Buffalo, New York, can set up accounts to pay employees and suppliers on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, for example. Managers at more sophisticated companies with global offices “can walk in and talk to our guys in Shanghai or Shenzhen or Mumbai.”

Next year, he said, upgraded Internet banking capabilities, will allow clients to more easily handle and view their accounts set up in different countries.

HSBC Canada, along with its competitors, is also opening new retail branches to acquire customers. It is most aggressive in the greater Toronto area, where it plans to have 53 branches within the next 18 months, up from 33. It is also adding up to 10 branches in energy-rich Alberta.

“All banks around the world are thinking like retailers,” O’Sullivan said. “You’ve got to have the right stores in the right locations to create the right traffic.” In the Pacific coast province of British Columbia, its ten percent market share in personal banking products “would put us right up there with the Big Five banks,” O’Sullivan said.

But HSBC Canada needs to bulk up its presence right across the personal banking spectrum, including full-service brokerage services and discount trading, and would also benefit from greater scale in the asset-management business, he said.