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Business News/ Opinion / The SBI merger: is bigger always better?
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The SBI merger: is bigger always better?

The process increasingly looks like a shotgun wedding, with not enough opportunity to pause and ponder

Photo: Pradeep Gaur/MintPremium
Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

The anticipated merger of the State Bank of India (SBI) with its five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) finally got off the ground with the government sending a letter to all seven banks on 20 June. From thereon, the time taken for obtaining individual board approvals, appointing legal and accounting firms as well as investment banks, getting them to conduct due diligence and arriving at a fair share swap ratio, was under two months.

That should be some kind of a record. Deals involving smaller companies or banks have taken far longer. And this is the country’s largest bank, SBI, merging with six other pretty large banks. There are many imponderables involved in such negotiations: for example, the overlap in the combined physical network, the people question, or integrating disparate back-end systems and processes. Clearly, the government is in a hurry to complete this merger.

The merger is being pursued in the belief that larger automatically means better. Vanity is also a motivating factor—creating an institution that will make it to the list of the world’s largest banks confers bragging rights.

There are perceived gains as well: the government, as shareholder, feels it will have six less capital-hungry banks to worry about. There are also expectations that a larger institution will be better equipped to deal with sticky loans, thereby enabling fresh credit outflows to productive sectors. Productivity and efficiency gains are among other expected benefits. But these could turn out to be illusory given the SBI’s legacy and ownership structure. A former SBI chairman had once remarked that reforming SBI was like trying to make an elephant dance. Even after discounting for exaggeration, there are grounds for circumspection; a large and unmanageable bank is getting even larger.

What’s even more worrying is how the process increasingly looks like a shotgun wedding, with not enough opportunity to pause and ponder. Three issues merit wider debate.

One, the merger patently lacks shareholder democracy. Individual shareholders have been discouraged from objecting. Anybody wishing to oppose must own at least 1% of either bank’s share capital (for example, that amounts to 77.6 million SBI shares) or must marshal 100 shareholders irrespective of their shareholding. According to SBI’s annual report for 2015-16, only five shareholders owned more than 1% in the bank on 31 March 2016: the President of India (60.18%), Life Insurance Corp. of India (11.27%), HDFC Trustee Co. Ltd (on behalf of HDFC Mutual Fund, 2.08%), Bank of New York Mellon (as depository for SBI’s outstanding global depository receipts, 1.86%) and Reliance Capital Trustee (on behalf of Reliance Mutual Fund, 1.09%).

Similarly, chances are that mostly institutions own shareholding of over 1% in the three associate banks with public shareholding—the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Travancore and State Bank of Mysore.

While it is safe to assume that the President won’t be objecting, it is also unlikely that any institutional investor will really challenge the process. The SBI owns 100% in the State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Hyderabad, while the government owns 100% in BMB. Two other associate banks were merged with the SBI earlier: the State Bank of Saurashtra in 2008 and State Bank of Indore in 2010.

In the face of such power asymmetry, in which one set of shareholders has greater rights than another group, the predictable has happened. Left trade unions in Kerala have taken the deal to court; there it might languish for a time.

Two, the merger seems to overlook a critical, post-crisis concern—the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) question. Tremors of the 2008 trans-Atlantic financial crisis were felt all over the interconnected world. The TBTF theory posits that some institutions are so large and intricately interconnected with different parts of the economy that failure can create a systemic shock. This forced many governments to bail out large financial institutions with taxpayer money. It might also be instructive to note that many countries have been formulating preventive TBTF regulations. Australia, for example, has prohibited any merger between the country’s four largest banks. Switzerland, on the other hand, has the world’s most stringent capital norms.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)—in keeping with various multilateral agreements at the Financial Stability Board, G20 and the Bank for International Settlements—has designed a risk mitigation framework for dealing with “domestic systemically important banks" or D-SIBs. The framework recognizes SBI and ICICI Bank as D-SIBs, both of which must maintain higher common equity tier I (CET I) than their peers. It allows national authorities greater discretion in the selection and risk mitigation processes than what’s prescribed for global systemically important banks, G-SIBs.

But here’s the thing. Once the merger is completed, SBI could become part of the G-SIB club, ending RBI’s discretionary approach. What happens then? Will the current capital shield be adequate? If no, what impact will additional CET I have on expected efficiencies? Even if it doesn’t get clubbed with G-SIBs, RBI will perforce have to review its D-SIB framework.

Finally, a speculative thought. Rumours are China now wants in on plurilateral trade in services agreement (TiSA) and India has also expressed a similar desire. Leaked TiSA documents show nil barriers to financial services imports, including total freedom to overseas financial companies for acquiring local outfits. Is the SBI merger a pre-emptive move then?

Some of these conversations need to happen now, not post-merger. Especially whether bigger is always better.

Rajrishi Singhal is a Mumbai-based policy consultant and journalist.

Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com.

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Published: 20 Sep 2016, 10:45 PM IST
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