ISAS Briefs

On 30 August 2019, the Indian government announced measures towards the long-awaited reform of state-owned banks by merging 10 banks into four larger entities. The move is also aimed at making their management accountable to their respective boards, and ensuring greater professionalism and longer tenures to higher executives. There are bound to be some short run challenges such as cultural differences among merging entities, manpower and branch redundancy and technological integration. It is very critical that urgent steps be taken in this direction to ensure the success of the merger exercise.