Corporation Bank Officers’ Organisation unhappy over merger plan

Opposing the decision of the Centre to merge Corporation Bank with Union Bank of India and Andhra Bank, the Corporation Bank Officers’ Organisation (CBOO) said the government has given a shock to them with the decision.

Read more:Govt banks on big bang mergers as GDP tanks

Satish Shetty, General Secretary of CBOO, told

BusinessLine that the bank was doing well after the infusion of ₹9,086 crore capital recently. All the employees were enthused with the capital infusion and the recovery process. “We wanted to prove that we will come back. We had registered profit in the last quarter also. This decision is a shock the government is giving to us,” he said.

Also read:Corporation Bank Q1 net up 21.50 per cent

Mentioning that the government is not giving the bank an opportunity to prove itself, he said the bank had come back with good performance after facing difficulties in the 1990s. Stating that CBOO was infusing strength and energy to its members to show their efficiency to the world, he said all its efforts have gone in vain.

Shetty hoped that the stakeholders of the bank from the coastal Karnataka will support the unions in opposing the merger of the bank with others. Asked about the future course of action of CBOO, he said the office-bearers will meet soon to chalk out future strategy.

‘Privatisation move’

GV Manimaran, General Secretary of All India Nationalised Banks Officers’ Federation, told BusinessLine that the PSB mergers are on the lines of the suggestion made by former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan in the report of the Committee on Financial Sector Reforms - A Hundred Small Steps – that was submitted to the Planning Commission. He said Rajan had suggested the merger among PSBs before privatising them in that report.

Manimaran said the recent mergers involving State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda have not yielded any visible results so far. He cautioned that the presence of private sector banks as payment banks and small banks will be throwing big challenge to the PSBs even after the merger.