BASIC Bank being merged with City Bank

This time it's the problem-ridden BASIC Bank that is being merged with the reputed private sector City Bank. This was decided today, Monday, at a meeting held in Bangladesh Bank.

This was learnt from sources in the central bank. Officials of the central bank said that the merging of BASIC Bank with City Bank will take place voluntarily. Basic Bank will now be the second bank to be merged with another bank in the private sector.

This decision was taken Monday morning at a meeting held between the Bangladesh Bank governor Abdur Rauf Talukdar and the City Bank chairman Aziz Al Kaiser and managing director (MD) Masrur Arefin.

Earlier on 19 March, the City Bank board was advised to merge with BASIC Bank. After that, the matter was discussed between the City Bank and BASIC Bank boards. Officials of the two banks discussed the matter among themselves. Though the two banks will merge, for the next three years they will draw up separate reports.

While the City Bank managing director Masrur Arefin did not confirm the merger with BASIC Bank, he told Prothom Alo that they were looking into the matter of a strong bank merging with a weak bank.

He said, "City Bank itself was a weak bank in 2007, and now we are the top local bank in the country. We are experienced at bank restructuring. We will get three years to merge the balance sheets. If these three years go well, we are confident of an extension. We want to grow into a stronger and bigger bank and to stand by the finance sector in times of crisis. That is why, being skilled in bank restructuring, we are analysing the weaker banks. I cannot say more than this."

With this, it has been decided to merge four banks in total, two government banks and two private ones. Padma Bank signed an agreement in March to merge with Exim Bank. This became the series of mergers. Bangladesh Bank has also decided to merge Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank with Krishi Bank, and Bangladesh Development Bank (BDBL) with Sonali Bank.