The merger of State Bank of India (SBI) with five associate lenders was cleared by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday. The move will make the state-owned lender a global-sized bank.
The merger of State Bank of India (SBI) with five associate lenders was cleared by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday. The move will make the state-owned lender a global-sized bank.
SBI, India’s largest lender, had last month mooted a proposal to merge its five subsidiaries with itself and to acquire the new Bharatiya Mahila Bank.
SBI’s five associate lenders are State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Hyderabad.
“Kindly await a structured briefing on that,” communications and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said when asked if the Cabinet had approved the merger.
The merged entity will have an asset base of Rs 37 trillion (Rs 37 lakh crore), or over $555 billion, 22,500 branches, 58,000 ATMs and over 50 crore customers. At present, SBI has close to 16,500 branches, including 191 foreign offices spread across 36 countries.
“Currently, no Indian bank features in the top 50 banks of the world. With this merger, visibility at the global level is likely to increase. Customers of associates and subsidiaries of the bank will also be beneficiaries,” SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said.
“Any introduction of new technology by SBI would simultaneously be available uniformly,” she added.
