This study examined the stock market reactions of acquirer public sector banks in India to merger announcements. All merger deals announced related to public sector banks from January 2016 to December 2022 were covered in the study. Stock prices were collected from the Bombay Stock Exchange website. The analysis observed positive returns on announcement day for all the acquirer banks except for Canara Bank. It can be noted from the upward and downward movement of AAR surrounding the event day that the market reacted quickly to the merger announcements in the Indian banking sector. The cumulative average abnormal returns results reported negative returns through the entire 21 days event window except for one day. These findings indicated that merger announcements created market turbulence and generated lower wealth for acquirer banks in India. These results may help bank managers and investors to formulate investment policies and strategies accordingly.
Mittal et al. (Thu,) studied this question.