By Patrick Werr CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian investment bank HC Securities and Investment, which has 5 billion Egyptian pounds under management, received permission on Monday to open an office in Syria, its chairman said. HC, which has been expanding in the Arab world to attract international investors, said it wanted to take advantage of reforms by Syria which has opened the country to banks and begun promoting private investment. "This is a preliminary licence which we got in writing today," Hussein Choucri told Reuters in an interview. "We are looking for an office as we speak." Seven years ago, Syria relinquished its monopoly of the banking sector which was nationalised along with much of the rest of the economy after the ruling Baath Party took power in 1963. Around 13 privately held commercial banks now operate in the country alongside six government banks which still have a dominant share of the assets. HC will own 60 percent of the new venture and two Syrian partners, Fouad Lahham and Razek Maamarbachi, will each own 20 percent. The last step will be to acquire a permit to actually start conducting business, Choucri said. "We figured that the private sector in Syria has grown substantially in the last few years as a result of the open door policy of the Syria government with the advent of President Bashar al-Assad," he said. "Private sector companies in Syria are in need of investment banking services, either to take them public or to attract foreign industry partners to provide capital and technology, or to allow Syrian families to monetise some of their investments," Choucri said. EXPANDING REGIONALLY HC opened a brokerage business in Dubai with the Al-Futtaim Group three years ago and last year received an investment banking licence at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). The company plans to expand in other markets as well, Choucri said. Choucri said some of the new banks in Syria, including affiliates of Lebanon's Banque Libano Francaise and Jordan's Arab Bank, have established their own investment banking units. Another Egyptian investment bank, Pioneers Holding, set up a Syrian affiliate in 2007. "International clients like to do their business with firms that have more than one market to cover. Gone is the model where you have one operation in Egypt, say, and you want to target the international clients in a significant way," Choucri said in an interview last week.