I need to open an account in UK bank. I need a suggestion which UK
bank (preferably with a branch in the USA) to use. Account is for a
small business.

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Request for Question Clarification by aht-ga on 21 Apr 2004 11:39 PDT

radja-ga:

The 'best' bank for a small business needing branch access in both the
UK and the USA would be HSBC. Actually, they are the best bank for
global access in many nations beyond just the UK and the USA, as they
have made it an imperative to make it easy for their clients to access
their banking services no matter which HSBC branch they deal with.

Before I can provide this as an Answer to you, though, I need to
clarify something first.

One caveat is that UK and US banking laws make it so that the bank
must establish itself as a financial institution within the country
that it operates in, irrespective of the bank's operations in other
countries. What that means is that technically, the UK operations of
HSBC and the US operations are separate banks, both under the umbrella
of the HSBC Group. It is through the strength of the HSBC Group,
though, that you can access your bank account through any branch of
any member of the HSBC banking family.

Is this an acceptable situation for your needs? If it is, please let
me know by responding to this request for clarification so that I can
post your Answer.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

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Clarification of Question by radja-ga on 21 Apr 2004 14:43 PDT

Well, I checked with HSBC and they didn't help much. It seems that I
need to go to UK to open an account. Any other suggestions?

Thank you

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Request for Question Clarification by aht-ga on 21 Apr 2004 15:03 PDT

I think I slightly misinterpreted what you were looking for, I now
understand from your latest clarification that you want to have a
UK-based bank account, accessible from the US.

While the HSBC approach would work for this, the catch is indeed that
your UK-based bank account would need to be opened in the UK, most
likely with a UK mailing address associated to the account.

Is there any particular reason why you need to have a UK-based
account? Perhaps there are other ways to achieve the same goals?
Otherwise, you will find that the other UK-based banks all have the
same requirements.