in an interaction with the media following the announcement of the amalgamation hdfc chairman deepak parekh explained the rationale for the merger with hdfc bank and the enabling factorswhat will be the role of the present management of hdfcthe process will take anywhere between one year and 18 months because of numerous approvals the rbi does not allow anyone aged above 75 to be on the board of a bank i have already crossed that age as far as keki mistry is concerned he is 67 so he may have a year or year and a half as a director and fulltime executive but he does not want to be a fulltime executive it is not that we do not want it but he can be a director on the board and he can handle the mortgage or investor relations function or whatever sashi hdfc bank md ceo sashidhar jagdishan wants him to see but we will be all taken care of and we do not think we will be thrown out it is a merger of equals as chairman atanu chakraborty said as the son grows older he acquires the fathers businessthe merger has been speculated about for a long time what is the triggerwe are being increasingly subject to the same regulations as banks under scalebased regulation for nbfcs hdfc would get categorised as an upper layer nbfc and have a regime closer to banks like banks we have to maintain part of the funds in government securities to meet the liquidity coverage ratio we also need to have core financial systems akin to the core banking system of banks earlier the national housing bank npa rules allowed loans to be reclassified as standard if part of the dues were repaid now it has been brought in line with banksinterest rates are more favourable today compared to earlier years banks now have an option to invest in priority sector certificates to meet priority sector norms as against direct lending to agriculture and msmes as a combined entity we will be able to offer the entire range of mortgage products including overdrafts which were not permitted earlierhave you sought any special dispensation from the rbi to enable the mergerwe have in our letter to the rbi said two things all new businesses will comply with the statutory liquidity ratio slr and cash reserve ratio crr requirement but please give us time to be compliant with our existing assets of hdfc for two to three years we have also sought time on meeting the targets on priority sector lending because we do not have agriculture or msme loans under the liquidity coverage ratio we anyway have to hold government securities but we have to work out how much is requiredwill hdfc relook at its stake in life insurance after the amalgamationthe rbi rule says you must hold either 30 or above 50 in an insurance subsidiary we have taken up the matter with the rbi asking to