Shriram Capital-IDFC Bank merger: Both groups have lot of complementarities, says Ajay Piramal

Mumbai: Explaining the objective of the proposed merger between the financial services majors Shriram Group and IDFC Group, Shriram Group Chairman Ajay Piramal on Monday said both the organisations have lot of complementarities. [caption id=“attachment_2009821” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ajay Piramal, chairman of Piramal group[/caption] Two groups had already announced that the boards of Shriram Group and IDFC entered into an exclusivity arrangement for 90 days to jointly explore the possibility of merger. “If you look at it, both the organisations have lot of complementarities in what they are doing. Shriram Group is strongly present in retail segment while IDFC is strong as far as the wholesale is concerned. Both the groups want to deliver to the customer something which was not done before,” Piramal told BTVi in an interview. He said the Group is serving millions of customers who till now had not been any banking experience while the products and the services which IDFC brings in to that will be unique. Asked on the rationale for keeping Shriram Transport out of the proposed merger, IDFC Bank’s MD and CEO Rajiv Lall told BTVi: “The relative sizes of the Shriram Transport and the bank are such that combining the two at once would have created difficult challenges, both regulatory and financial point of view.” According to Lall, Shriram Transport will operate as an independent NBFC.