Japan's Eighteenth Bank, Shinwa Bank to postpone merger by 6 months (updated)
30/10/2018 08:12
(Changes sourcing, adds bank comments)
TOKYO, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Japan's Shinwa Bank and Eighteenth
Bank Ltd 8396.T have decided to postpone their planned merger
by six months, saying they wanted to bring the dates of their
merger and systems integration closer together to avoid
complications for customers.
The announcement was made on Tuesday by Eighteenth Bank and
Shinwa Bank's parent Fukuoka Financial Group 8354.T .
Eighteenth Bank and Shinwa Bank got approval in August from
Japanese authorities to merge after a lengthy review that had
sparked a battle between the antitrust watchdog and financial
regulators. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N1VF30O
Shinwa Bank and Eighteenth Bank - both based on the southern
island of Kyushu - said at the time their merger was expected to
be completed in April 2020.
The banks have now rescheduled the merger for October 2020,
three months before the planned date for their systems
integration.
"We wanted to minimise the period in which customers would
be using two different systems as much as possible," said an
official at Fukuoka Financial, which will buy Eighteenth Bank
and merge it with Shinwa.
The postponement was earlier reported by the Nikkei business
daily, which attributed the delay to preparation for a change in
the local calendar with the abdication of the emperor next year.
The Nikkei said the banks decided to postpone the merger by
six months to avoid potential system troubles with the added
workload of making necessary changes to the system with the
change of the imperial era in May next year.
Emperor Akihito is due to abdicate on April 30, 2019.
The Fukuoka Financial Group official said the change of the
local calendar was part of the reason.
(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka and Junko Fujita
Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Gopakumar Warrier)
((taiga.uranaka@thomsonreuters.com; +81-3-6441-1813; Reuters
Messaging: taiga.uranaka.reuters.com@reuters.net))