China Construction Bank (CCB 601939.SH ), the second largest bank in the world by market capitalisation, wants to create a full branch based on its Russian representative office, it has announced.

The CCB board decided in a meeting on Sunday to inject around USD150m into the capital of its newly created Russian unit, after opening the representation office in May this year.

CCB's decision comes in the face of European rivals pulling out of the increasingly competitive Russian banking market, with Barclays and HSBC shutting retail banking operations in Russia.

CCB's market capitalisation of USD167bn makes it almost three times the size of Russia's top lender, Sberbank,

In May, Zhang Jianguo, the President of CCB, said that a move in to the Russian market would allow the company to better operate in the rest of eastern Europe, and that the company would seize any opportunities to buy Russian commercial banks.