“Roaring with national pride. Soaring with global dreams,” blared the HSBC Holdings Plc ad outside an upscale Mumbai suburb in December. The 122-foot billboard displayed a tiger stalking over the British bank’s hexagonal red logo — a not-too-subtle signal of its ambitions to dominate the financial industry of what’s by some estimates now the world’s most populous country.
Those expansion plans are vital to shore up growth at Europe’s largest lender, which is grappling with a downturn in profits from the Greater China region. Shanghai and Hong Kong have been the bank’s centers of gravity since opening its doors more