SBI and its five associate banks received a nod from the Union Cabinet for the merger last week.
The merger of State Bank of India with its associates may get delayed as the banks are yet to seek a nod from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), an RTI filed by The Hindu newspaper revealed.
Last week, the Union Cabinet approved the merger of the banks. SBI's five associate banks, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Travancore would be merging with the parent bank after all the due approvals are received. However, the Cabinet did not give a decision on the merger of the Bharatiya Mahila Bank which is also in the process of merging with SBI.
HIndu's RTI got the response, "The Commission has not given permission for the takeover of subsidiary banks." It added, "the five subsidiary banks have not sought permission from CCI either individually or collectively for the takeover."
SBI chair Arundhati Bhattacharya recently said that the merger would be completed in FY18. "We think the merger would be some time in the next financial year because we are a listed company and doing such a large exercise just before the annual closing may not be a very good idea," she told news channels," according to a PTI report.
Bhattacharya added that after the merger, SBI would enter the league of top 50 banks globally. "It would be difficult to give ranking at this particular time because it depends on both tier I capital and the asset size. Last year, our ranking was 52 or 53. It should probably go up," she said, according to the aforementioned PTI report.
Post-merger, the combined entity will have 23,899 branches and employee strength of 2,71,765. On the balance sheet size, she said that as of December, consolidated deposits were a little over Rs 2,604,473 crore (Rs 26.04 trillion) and advances stood at Rs 18,76,727 crore (Rs 18.76 trillion). The consolidated balance sheet stood at Rs 32,18,498 crore (Rs 32.18 trillion).
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