LONDON -- The head office of Moscow Narodny Bank, on King William Street in London, has that curious mixture of the monolithic but less-than-grand which was essentially Soviet. Faced by a Lubyanka-like facade with huge doors, your attention is directed to a side entrance, and you enter to find a receptionist with a stud through her nose.


Since 1923, when the Soviets wrested control of the bank from a group of emigr?s, the London-based MNB was used by the Soviet government to help finance its trade with the West. In the 1950s, the bank assured itself a place in the financial history books by playing a leading role in the setting up of the Eurodollar market, a by-product of Nikita Khrushchev's push to raise dollars in Europe against a feared cold shoulder to dollar loans from the U.S. government.


Then, as Mikhail Gorbachev borrowed heavily trying to save the Soviet Union, disaster almost struck as the bank began to sink under the weight of doubtful loans to state enterprises. Collapse was averted in 1991-92 thanks to a $394 million capital injection from Moscow.


Today, under the ownership of the Russian Central Bank, the bank is gradually changing its profile. The general manager, Derek Farmer, told The Moscow Times that profits in 1995 should exceed last year's ?20.1 million ($31.71 million).


The very British name of the general manager indicates the dual nature of the bank. Its status is that of a U.K.-incorporated bank whose shareholders happen to be Russian state bodies. Endowed with full Bank of England authorization, MNB always had license to speculate on the London markets, despite its Communist ownership.


The bank's chairman and most of its directors are from the Soviet (now Russian) state banking elite, many of them graduates of the Moscow Institute for Finance. The current chairman, Alexander Semikoz, began as a trainee at MNB in 1972. His position at the top entitles him to a salary of around ?180,000.


The nonexecutive directors include Viktor Gerashchenko, former head of Russia's Central Bank. Further down, the staff are mainly British, and the bank's operating language is English, not Russian.


There has been a radical change in the bank's asset distribution over recent years. After its bad-debt crisis, MNB drew in its horns, reducing its loan-book from more than ?2 billion to less than ?1 billion through a reduction in medium and long-term trade finance lending to state-controlled industry in Russia and Eastern Europe.


In an ongoing process, MNB has greatly increased its bank deposits and placements, mainly with banks in OECD countries, and has gradually stepped up its short-term nonbank lending. At the end of last year, around two-thirds of MNB's ?1.08 billion loan portfolio was with other banks.


The bank can no longer count on "business on a plate from ex-Soviet state enterprises," Farmer said, but the attractions of such business in the current climate are dubious in any case. A large part of its remaining nonbank lending is to the Russian fishing fleet, a relatively secure loan since MNB holds mortgage rights over the fleet.


Profits at the bank in this and coming years depend heavily on a rapid agreement with the London Club of lenders on rescheduling repayment of Russia's commercial debt. Once this agreement is reached, the bank will be able to speed up removal of its debt provisions.


The bank has always had lesser profit centers away from London. A branch in Beirut closed down in the 1980s owing to the Lebanese civil war, but a branch in Singapore is currently flourishing and provided 13 percent of MNB's gross income in 1994.


Singapore was not an obvious target for Soviet political and financial intrigue, but conspiracy theorists believed that meddling from Moscow was behind a disastrous period in the 1970s and early 1980s when the bank was briefly the biggest lender in the country, and then found itself with a heap of bad debts. Allegedly the Soviet government's plan was to gain control of strategic land in the region, which MNB would receive in lieu of the bad debts.


The bank still calls the former Soviet Union its "niche market." Its focus, however, has changed rapidly. It now provides correspondent services in London to around 300 Russian commercial banks, and a wholly owned Moscow subsidiary, Monab Services, offers services in project assessment and finance.


British bank regulators and the London banking community remain very wary of the wild new world of Russian finance. In the eyes of the London financial world, the bank's transition from communism to capitalism has made the bank less dependable.


Moscow Narodny Bank may have changed as much as Russia has, but, while it is an established part of the London scene, it remains a bank apart.