Australian banking system knows great deal of examples when different banks signed the merger contracts. Such mergers were for good for both banks, as well as for different sectors in the bank business. The merger between Westpac Bank and St. George Bank that took place in 2008 was one of the biggest deals in Australia for recent years. The merger positively affected the staff of those both banks. The Case of Westpac Bank and St. George Bank merger may be easily considered from the human resource management perspective.
The merger of the Westpac bank that is the member of the “Big Four” in Australia and the simple regional bank St. George was sure to result in organizational changes and restructuring of the human resources. It is necessary to mention that Wayne Wilson was announced as the head of St. Gorge Business. Furthermore, after the merger, the BT in Australia announced some central appointments with Jan Swinhoe (Westpac bank head) and David Hewitt (St. George head) to communicate the human resource strategy (Levy 2008).
The merger of those banks did not influence the St. Gorge bank staff greatly. Thus, John Curtis, being the professional company director for 21 year, was re-appointed to the leading position in St. Gorge bank by the Westpac Corporation on December 1, 2008. The same happened to another director, Peter Hawkins, while there were a number of new faces, such as Greg Bartlett, Lindsay Maxsted, and Gail Kelly (Our directors 2009).
Some changes are going to be provided in the CRM system to make it possible to relate the systems of those both banks and make them work similarly (Lohman 2009). Merger is sure that it will be able to organize a business in such a way that provides the company’s “moving onto a single general ledger, combining HR systems” (WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION 2010). The segregation of duties in the banks that have conducted a merger is observed, thus the staff of the St. George bank deals with some duties, while the Westpac staff deals with the others (Westpac Banking Corp 2010).
The companies continue to provide their services under their own brand names (Westpac Banking Corporation 2008). It should be noticed that the Westpac decision to give “1.31 shares for every St George share” has a great impact on the both banks structure in general (St. George 2008, p. 5). Furthermore, the merger makes it possible to create the “largest bank by market capitalization” (Wright 2008, p. 84) that results in creation of new additional working places.
It was impossible to omit the problems in the human resource management as St. George bank had obtained the reputation of a small family bank, while Westpac was considered to be the leading country bank (Where quirky meets corporate 2010). Still, to promote the collaboration between personnel Westpac “will adopt St George’s ‘Spider’ teller system, HR Express human resource software and the ‘Firefly’ customer relationship management platform” (Sharma & Bingemann 2009, par. 5).
Thus, it is important to remind that the merger of the companies influences not only the financial situation within those companies, but also the human resource management. Being the family bank, St. George was involved into the business of the leading bank Westpac that is considered to be elite. Still, the changes in the staff were not very cardinal that allowed the vast majority of the personnel remain on its positions.
References
Levy, B., 2008. BT wealth management team named. Money Management, 22(47), p. 10.
Lohman, T., 2009. Westpac Outlines St George IT Integration Strategy Westpac eyes off St George’s CRM, teller and HR systems. CIO. Web.
Our directors, 2009. St George. Web.
Sharma M. & Bingemann, M., 2009. Westpac to use St George apps. The Australian. Web.
St. George: bank revealed to be takeover target, 2008. MarketWatch: Financial Services, (7), pp. 5-6.
Westpac Banking Corp., 2010. Financial Times. Web.
Westpac Banking Corporation, 2008. New York Times. Web.
WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION, 2010. Westpac Banking. 60IP WESTPAC PRESS RELEASE AND OUTLOOK. Web.
Where quirky meets corporate – St. George meets Westpac, 2010. Human Resources Leader. Web.
Wright, C., 2008. Australia: Westpac whirlwind sweeps up St George. Euromoney. pp. 84-87.