Podcast | Digging Deeper: Bank mergers - Is there strength in unity?

On January 2, 2019, The Economic Times rang in the New Year on a cautiously hopeful note and writer Atmadip Ray stated, “After many false hopes over the past few years, there appears to be a new dawn for the banking industry in the year 2019. The pitch is somewhat ready for a long innings, although there could be occasional bouncers either from the government in an election year to win votes, or a financial calamity from shores far away.”

And what did he base this estimation on? He believes that regulatory moves will curb excesses in the Indian financial world and also that the resolution of corporate stressed assets might help to unclog the system. He also thinks the bad loans formation could slow down, and cites the Reserve Bank of India's latest Financial Stability Report, stating that gross bad loans would slide in fiscal 2019, a first since 2015.

And what is the imagined icing on the cake, for this analyst? Well, the success of the three-way merger of Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank! His assessment is one of many diverse voices on the subject we will be talking about today. We have covered this issue when it was first announced.

On this edition of Digging Deeper, we will address the momentous merger and try to make sense of the fine print and just what it entails. Are bank mergers an effective solution? What is the precedent for it? Did it work for SBI? These are some of the questions we will tackle on this episode of Digging Deeper with Moneycontrol.