ONE of British banking’s best- kept secrets is preparing for life in the spotlight after its record shirt sponsor’s deal with Liverpool FC.

Standard Chartered is the 16th-biggest UK company by market capitalisation, but almost unknown due to its concentration on the growth markets of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

But its UK profile is set to soar when its four-year deal with LFC – worth up to £80m for the Anfield club – begins in July and when the kit bearing the bank’s brand goes on sale tomorrow.

Head of corporate communications Tim Baxter said the sponsorship is the first and the biggest of its kind in the bank’s 150-year history.

He explained: “We’re a bank in the FTSE20, yet no-one knows who we are because our focus is Asia, Africa and the Middle East.”

The bank chose football to raise customer awareness because of its huge popularity in the Far East: “Liverpool is one of the top names, and in our markets in Asia certainly one of the top clubs.

“When we started talking to Liverpool, we felt very comfortable. It’s a club with a strong history.”

And the bank intends to “sweat its asset”.

Mr Baxter said: “We want to invest in the brand more and put money behind the name.

“It is going to get us hundreds of thousands of TV hours and on the front of millions of shirts over the four years.

“We’re confident we will get a return. There are lots of talks going on.

“The team will come out to Asia next year or the year after for a pre-season tour, and we will look at other ways of using our sponsorship.”

Standard Chartered was founded to facilitate trade across the British Empire.

Its first two branches were in Shanghai and Calcutta, and its focus remains firmly Eastern- orientated, with the Chinese economy growing 10% a year and India’s expanding by 7%.

The group has achieved record profits and income for the past seven years, despite the credit crunch, with revenues of about £10.1bn and profits of £3.4bn last year.

Yesterday, it reported record first-quarter income and profits.

Mr Baxter said: “We’re quite old-fashioned in the sense that we are quite conservative when it comes to risk. We have more deposits than loans which is quite unusual for a bank these days.”

The bank employs 75,000 staff in 70 countries. It prints bank notes in Hong Kong and operates the biggest branch network of any foreign bank in India.