IMPACT OF MERGER AND ACQUISITION OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN NIGERIA

Mergers and acquisitions as a form of corporate restructuring are reform strategies recently adopted to reposition the banking sector. This research work seeks to examine the impacts of mergers and acquisition of commercial bank’s performance in Nigeria as the main objective. The research used shareholders fund and profit after tax of the selected banks as proxies to measure the financial efficiency of the banks in both pre and post consolidation eras in Nigeria. Two banks were selected for this study using simple random sampling methods. Data were collected from Academic journals, Nigerian stock exchange archive, text books, magazines, newspapers, companies’ annual reports, and internet sources and were subsequently analyzed using correlation and regression with the aid of Econometrics view (version 7). This research found out that “mergers and acquisition” is an effective means of ensuring the stability and profitability of the banking sector, the study also found out that shareholders fund contributed significantly to the profit after tax of the banks, and that corporate restructuring has affected the capital adequacy of commercial banks positively, It was also discovered that synergy gains are the key motive for bank mergers.