HSBC has signed an agreement with leading Italian bank Banca Nazionale del Lavoro SpA (BNL) to acquire the latter’s banking operations in Argentina for a consideration of $155m.

BNL’s operations in Argentina, comprising 91 branches and more than 725,000 customers, will now be merged into the operations of HSBC Bank Argentina which already has a network of 58 and over 512,000 customers.