(Reuters) - Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N) struck a deal to buy HSBC's (HSBA.L) U.S. credit card arm for $2.6 billion more than the face value of the loans, the latest in a string of acquisitions for the U.S. bank.

The deal gives Capital One $30 billion of additional assets, which it needs because of a separate acquisition that will leave it with $80 billion of new deposits.

For HSBC, the sale is part of a drive by new Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver to streamline its business and cut costs by $3.5 billion a year. The bank said last week it is selling 195 bank branches in Upstate New York for $1 billion.

By historical standards, Capital One is paying a low price in the HSBC deal, and its shares rose 1.2 percent in morning trading, one of the few major bank stocks to be higher in a difficult session for the sector.

"They paid a lower price than we anticipated, which speaks to what the market is like now," said Chris Brendler, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore.

Capital One is paying a premium to assets of about 8.75 percent, while portfolios would often go for premiums of 10 percent in the 2000s and 20 percent in the 1990s, Brendler said. Still, bankers said there are few recent comparable sales to benchmark this one against.

The deal further unravels HSBC's disastrous $15 billion purchase of U.S. consumer lending firm Household in 2003, which triggered billions of dollars of subprime mortgage losses. Executives now admit the buy was a mistake.

The Household deal created one of the world's top 10 credit card firms, and HSBC said it gave it the scale and expertise to broaden its cards business across the world. Almost half of Household's $105 billion of loans were to credit card customers.

CAPITAL ONE BULKS UP

Capital One has twice swooped in for unwanted U.S. assets from a retreating European bank in recent months. The McLean, Virginia-based firm said in June it was buying ING's (ING.AS) U.S. online bank for $9 billion in cash and stock.

ING Direct has about $80 billion of deposits, funding assets including $40.7 billion of mortgage loans and about $30 billion of investment securities, most of which were backed by home loans. Capital One said it planned to replace mortgage assets with credit card, auto and commercial loans.

Capital One, founded by Richard Fairbank in 1988, was historically a specialty credit card lender, but in the middle of the last decade it began buying banks to gain access to cheaper and more stable deposit funding.

Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) was also interested in buying the HSBC portfolio, sources said last month.

HSBC's U.S. credit card portfolio earned $1 billion in pre-tax profit in the first half of 2011 and was consistently profitable during the downturn.

For HSBC, the sale will free up capital when banks are under pressure to bolster their balance sheets, but it will not help Gulliver's task of lifting profitability, as the U.S. credit card portfolio was a high-return business.

"Selling a business that makes an annualized 30 percent return on equity and parking the cash is clearly dilutive," said Mike Trippitt, an analyst at Oriel Securities in London.

HSBC will book a post-tax gain of $2.4 billion on the sale and boost its consolidated core Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio by 60 basis points to 11.4 percent.

Capital One will pay the consideration in cash and stock, with HSBC taking up to $750 million of Capital One shares as part of the deal.

HSBC will use the proceeds from the sale to repay debt, among other purposes.

HSBC last week said it will shed nearly half of its underperforming U.S. branch network, selling 195 branches to First Niagara Financial Group Inc (FNFG.O) for $1 billion and closing 13 more.

Earlier this month, it announced it will cut 30,000 jobs as it slashes costs and retreats from countries such as Russia, Poland and the United States, where it lacks scale or is struggling to compete.

HSBC has been criticized for spreading itself too widely, gathering roughly 95 million customers across 87 markets, and Gulliver is aiming to put focus back on profitability.

The revamp, aimed at sharpening its focus on Asia, reverses a strategy that has been criticized for "planting flags" around the world.

Capital One shares were up 49 cents to $41.26 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The KBW bank index .BKX was down 2.5 percent.

HSBC's London-listed shares were down 5.8 percent at 513.3 pence at 1500 GMT. The shares are down 17 percent this year, outperforming a 25 percent fall by the European banking index .SX7P.

JPMorgan advised HSBC on the deal, while Morgan Stanley, Centerview Partners and Kessler Group advised Capital One.

(Reporting by Dan Wilchins in New York and Denny Thomas in Hong King; additional reporting by Kelvin Soh in Hong Kong and Steve Slater in London; Editing by Ken Wills, Andrew Callus and Johnn Wallace)

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