La Maison du Chocolat has been a Paris institution for more than 30 years, with its several branches all decorated in rich cocoa tones.

BBC: Paris�� world of chocolate

Mexican street food came to the London masses with the opening of the lively and fun canteen-style Wahaca -- now with several branches across the capital including Covent Garden and Soho.

BBC: Cheap ethnic eats in London

Start your morning in South Indian culinary heaven at one of several branches of Saravana Bhavan with a masala dosa, a huge, crisp rice pancake stuffed with a potato-onion filling served with tangy coconut chutneys.

BBC: Child��s play amid Delhi��s chaos

Last August, gumshoes at Japan's central bank discovered that, despite Daiwa's woes, the New York branches of several other Japanese banks were still failing to separate record-keeping from trading operations.

ECONOMIST: Banking��s bad jokes

In Mr. Frampton's lab, technicians spent several hours this past week rubbing the branches and weighing needle loss from hundreds of Fraser fir samples, to weed out non-needle-holding family lines.

WSJ: Fir Real? Christmas Trees in Crisis as Americans Flock to Fakes

Several banks provide basic accounts through their own branches.

ECONOMIST: Squeezing the banks

NBG's parent, the National Bank of Greece, owns several big banks in Bulgaria and Macedonia and has branches all over Serbia.

ECONOMIST: Good neighbours