VietNamNet Bridge – Analysts believe that 2015 will be the “year of bank merger & acquisitions”, especially for banks in danger of a “merge or die” situation.

No bank M&A deal was wrapped up in 2014, but things will be different in 2015.

“This year will witness a bank M&A boom,” said Vu Viet Ngoan, chair of the National Finance Supervision Council.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung at an earlier banking conference also said the most important tasks of the banking sector in 2015 are settling weak credit institutions and reducing the bad debt ratio to under 3 percent of total outstanding loans.

Tran Ngoc Tam, deputy CEO of Nam A Bank on January 8, said in Tien Phong that the bank’s board of directors is going to consult with the shareholders about a plan to admit another bank.

“If the merger gets the nod from the State Bank soon, the plan would be implemented in the late first quarter of the year,” he said.

This plan has surprised many analysts, because Nam A has never been considered a “big player” in the market.

With chartered capital of VND4 trillion, the bank is managed by chair Nguyen Quoc Toan, the son of renowned real estate businesswoman Tu Huong.

The Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) and Vietcombank, two “big players”, are also expected to admit two “juniors” in 2015 as per the request of the State Bank.

Le Xuan Nghia, a renowned economist, noted that in most cases it is only the small bank that wants to join larger banks. Large banks are willing to admit small banks only because the State Bank asked them to do so.

BizLIVE, a financial news website, quoted its sources as saying that GP Bank is considering merging with LienViet Post Bank.

However, a senior executive at LienViet Post Bank said his bank does not intend to do this, as it acquired what it wanted when admitting the Post Savings Company a number of years ago, which wanted to take full advantage of the company’s large network.

The GP Bank’s plan to sell 100 percent of shares to Singaporean UOB has failed because the seller and buyer could not reach a consensus on the price and some other matters.

Among the reasons, UOB wanted to turn GP Bank into a foreign bank, not a foreign bank branch in Vietnam.

Ngoan, in an interview with VnExpress, said unlike other economists, he does not place high expectations on having foreign capital as an important resource in the banking restructuring process.

Kim Chi