Perspective of Merger and Acquisition in the Indian Banks - A Sectoral Analysis *

MERGER & ACQUISITION (M AND A) aims towards business restructuring thereby increasing competitiveness and shareholders’ value via increased efficiency. The banking industry has experienced an unprecedented level of consolidation on a belief that incomparable gain can accrue through expense reduction, increased market power, reduced earnings volatility and scale and scope of economies. The banking sector is one of the most important instruments of the national development. Economic development of the country is evident through soundness of the banking system. Deregulation in the financial markets, markets liberalization, economic reforms have witnessed astounding changes in the banking industry leading to incredible competitiveness and technological sophistication leading to a new era in banking. Since, then every bank is relentless in their endeavor to become financially strong and operationally efficient and effective. When deregulation dawned the horizon non banking financial institutions, private and foreign banks entered the fray with their hitechs. The outwit competition in the banking industry is bound to vault further down the lane, which in turn would make banking business more challenging and perplexing. A paradigm shift is discernable in the Indian Banking arena. This article concentrates on some M and A that have occurred post liberalization in India to understand the intents of “the Targets” and “the Acquirers”. The purpose of the present paper is to explore various motives of merger in Indian banking industry. The data of Merger and Acquisitions since economic liberalization are collected for a set of various financial parameters. Independent T-test used for testing the statistical significance and this test is applied not only for ratio analysis but also effect of merger on the performance of banks. This performance being tested on the basis of two grounds i.e.. Pre-merger and Post- merger. Finally the study indicates that the banks have been positively affected by the event of merger