THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Small shareholders could be affected in bank merger   

Small shareholders could be affected in bank merger   

If commercial banks merge, their minority shareholders could be affected, given a possibility of a dilution effect or capital increase, according to Asia Plus Securities.

Usanee Liurut, executive vice president of Asia Plus Securities, said "merging commercial banks should take who is the buyer into consideration as this could affect them and, particularly retail investors. In the past, sometimes, an acquisition of an enterprise required a capital increase which gave impacts to individual investors who had to add more investment and dilution effect could incur to banks' existing shareholders who, as a result, received less return."
Presently, investors expected mergers of state-backed banks could take place faster, she said.
TMB Bank's assets amount to Bt800 billion, while Krungthai bank's accounted for Bt2.8 trillion. If both banks are merged, the combined assets will be about Bt3.6 trillion and its loan structure is similar focusing on large-sized loans.
The comments came after the Cabinet's approval on tax measure to encourage banks' mergers in its meeting on Tuesday. 
 

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