KL's three-way bank merger lacks oomph

FOR a banker well respected for his dealmaking ingenuity, CIMB boss Nazir Razak's newly hatched three-way merger plan involving CIMB Group, RHB Capital and Malaysia Building Society Bhd (MBSB) may be big, but it falls short of being daring. Nor is it beautiful.

Big AND beautiful, in a ground-shifting way, could have been that elusive deal where CIMB hooks up with Malaysia's largest bank Maybank and, with a fire power of $370 billion in combined assets, high jump to the second spot as South-east Asia's largest lender, scattering for the first time the stranglehold of Singapore's banking heavyweights in the top three spots.

That - the making of a formidable regional champion - would be worthy of the celebratory drumbeat of the kompang to mark national pride. But not this. This tripartite merger, which will vault the enlarged entity just one rung higher and depose Maybank to become Malaysia's largest bank by merely a 6 per cent gap in assets, while a Malaysian bank still remains stuck in fourth place in the region, is a deal deserving of the "jaguh kampung" (village champion) pride variety.