Development Of China's Banking Industry Mergers And Acquisitions

AbstractThe ongoing mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in banking industry is one of the most notable contemporary features of the financial landscape, and its scale, scope and influence are all unprecedented. Pushing by the economic globalization and the high-tech technology revolution, many countries accelerated their financial reforms, loosen those rigid regulations and removed restrictions on financial industry, thus achieving cross-segment operations among banks and other financial firms, accelerating bank enlargement, and impelling more banks to globalize in order to strengthen their competitiveness. From this point of view, banking M&As indicates the banking strategic repositioning towards new prospects of worldwide economic growth and competitive intensification, and reveals banking market structure and competitive situation in the 21 ~ century as well.Upon joining the WTO and striding forward to globalization, we need to formulate relevant strategies on the basis of mastering the new trend of banking industry, in order to promote China抯 competitiveness and resistance. The study on M&As in banking industry is organized as follows:Chapter 1 presents a brief introduction of the theories concerning banking M&As. This chapter begins by specifying the definition of banking M&As, which is used throughout both the chapter and the following study. Then, states the specific ways they have been carried and the major concerning theories.Chapter 2 reveals the new features of banking M&As in recent years. These features include four aspects: (1) The number and size of M&A activity increase substantially over time. As a result, a significant number of large, and in some cases increasingly complex, banking holding companies or financial conglomerates have been created through M&As between larger banks. (2) Cross-border M&.As increased in frequency and value. (3) The removal of legal and regulatory barriers has opened the way for increased M&As both within and across financial industry segments. (4) M&As extended into online banking.Chapter 3 is an extended discussion of the potential implications of banking M&As based on a series of real cases and statistics since M&As entail both risks and opportunities for banks. These positive and negative implications include the experiences that can be used in the future, as well as the lessons should be noticed. Chapter 4 showing the objective of the thesis considers the development of the Chinese banks, which is based on the foundation laid by all previous chapters. It analyses the present status of Chinese banking industry, especially those of banking M&As. Then it comes up with some countermeasures to deal with the international trends and also to raise the sophistication of their operations to world-class levels.