Egypt's government has dropped plans to merge Housing and Development Bank (HDB) and state-owned Egyptian Arab Land Bank, the central bank's deputy governor said on Wednesday.
The two banks were both being restructured with an eye toward a possible merger sometime before the end of 2012, a move that would have created Egypt's sixth or seventh biggest commercial bank.
"It's not in the plans to merge these two banks," Hisham Ramez said at a news conference, without giving a reason for the change in plan.
He declined to rule out the possibility of reviving the planned merger some day in the future.
Egyptian Arab is Egypt's fourth-biggest state bank by assets.
The government owns over 60 per cent of HDB.
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