Bank Mergers and Acquisition and Shareholders’ Wealth Maximization in Nigeria

Banks operating in a regulated environment need to operate within the fiscal, monetary, political and legal regulations; customer tastes, habits and demand; and input supply changes. Changes in these require adjustments in the bank’s operations. Coping with these require finance and instant expansion which are both expensive and difficult. Merger and acquisition has proven an appropriate business, growth and financial strategy with which banks in Nigeria can cope in their dynamic operating business environment improving firm returns, maximizing shareholders’ wealth. Research findings using the paired t-test of data for 2003 and 2009 of dividend/share and earnings/share from the same sample show from the merger and acquisition programme in 2005 made shareholders better-off. This implies the post merger and acquisition desire of bank managements to reward shareholders abundantly. Regression results show that there is a significant positive relationship between changes in naira dividend paid by merged sampled banks between 2009 and 2003 and changes in banks’ capital indicating that changes in dividend received by shareholders from merged banks is highly attributable to changes in banks’ capital bases made possible by the 2005 mergers and acquisitions in the sector, necessitating the maintenance of this dividend trend by banks to retain current shareholders and attract new investors during future increases in banks’ capital base.