Sbb Merger

1.0 COMPANY PROFILE

The focus of this Strategic Management assignment is on Southern Bank Berhad. It will be divided into eight major sections, namely company profile, financial analysis, industry profile, PEST analysis, strategies of the company, strategy analyses, comments and strategy recommendations, and the conclusion. Therefore, the scope covered in this assignment is indeed a large one, and various sources are used in this assignment. Where appropriate, the sources used are documented and given due recognition.

The profile of the company will be discussed in this section. Most of the information in this section, because of its generic nature, was sourced from the Internet and the annual reports of the company.

1.1 Company Background

Southern Bank Berhad (hereinafter called “SBB”) is Malaysia's ninth largest bank and one of the ten anchor banks in Malaysia as of February 2000. The other nine anchor banks are Malayan Banking Berhad, Bumiputra Commerce Bank Berhad, RHB Bank, Public Bank Berhad, Arab-Malaysian Bank Berhad, Hong Leong Bank, Perwira Affin Bank, Multi-Purpose Bank Berhad, and EON Bank. SBB was the first bank in Malaysia to successfully complete a merger with the then Ban Hin Lee Bank in June 2000 .

SBB is the parent company of ten different subsidiary companies, namely S.B. Venture Capital Corporation Sdn Bhd, Southern Nominees (Asing) Sdn Bhd, Southern Nominees (Tempatan) Sdn Bhd, SBB Capital Markets Sdn Bhd, S.B. Properties Sdn Bhd, BHLB Properties Sdn Bhd, Southern Investment Bank Berhad, BHL Venture Berhad, Southern Finance Berhad, and Southern Nominees (Singapore) Sdn Bhd. SBB holds full ownership (100% stake) in all the subsidiaries except for Southern Investment Bank Berhad, of which it holds 80% shares. SBB also has a 20% stake in BHLB Trustee Berhad, which makes it only an associated (not parent) company with BHLB Trustees Berhad. Some of these subsidiaries, in turn, are parent companies of other subsidiaries. Therefore,