MOSCOW, July 29 (Reuters) - Russia’s largest bourse Moscow Exchange (MOEX) plans a big expansion in the foreign shares it offers and an extension of trading hours, its market head said on Thursday, under a growth plan focused on luring business particularly from Asia. MOEX has already started trading foreign currency, gold and derivatives three hours earlier from March 1 to attract Asian investors and is now preparing to adopt this practice on the stock market. It plans to start opening the stock market at 0400 GMT and to launch daily opening auctions at 0350 GMT (0700 and 0650 Moscow time, respectively) in November or December, market chief Boris Blokhin told reporters. The bourse also plans to increase the number of foreign shares on offer to around 500 by the end of this year and 1,000 by the end of 2022, focusing on U.S. companies as well as shares from Hong Kong, China and Europe. The bourse expects to have 204 foreign firms trading on the exchange in early August. “We want to add the most liquid shares, with a focus on U.S. stocks, definitely the entire list of shares from S&P 500 index,” Blokhin said. As of early August, MOEX will have 204 foreign stocks on offer. The bourse is also looking at trading foreign shares in U.S. dollars, Blokhin said. It currently trades foreign stocks in Russian roubles but dividends are paid in their native currency. (Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya Additional reporting by Anna Rzhevkina Editing by Andrey Ostroukh and David Holmes) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.