India: SBI pushes merger of 5 associate banks

The merger of the five associate banks with State Bank of India will be postponed to by a quarter due to the demonetisation exercise, acknowledged SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya who for weeks had said that the merger is as per the schedule. The bank had announced in May plans to merge its five associate banks with itself by March 2017 to emerge as a global bank in order to compete with peers in emerging markets.

Speaking to media on Monday on whether the merger of associate bank is as per the schedule, Bhattacharya said that the merger will “probably be delayed by a quarter”. She said that the delay has been because the government has not notified the merger.

“The reason is we still have to get government approval. Even if I get the approval right now doing things in the last quarter is not a wise thing. There will be a lot of IT system changes and normally by mid-February we close down all IT system changes as these can impact something else quit unknowingly. We do not want to take any risks at the annual closing time. So we may just want to do the annual closing then look at it,” she said.

Full Content: Economic Times

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