What drives mergers and acquisitions waves in developing countries? Evidences from Iranian banking industry

M any Middle-East countries, like Iran, have dynamic banking industries and have observed merger and acquisitions (M&A) waves. M&A waves are usually defined in the developed world context and some of their main drivers were identified as: market timing, environment's shocks, merger manias, government regulation and regulatory, and technological changes. It has been discussed that merger waves and their reasons are among the ten most important unsolved mysteries in the field of finance (Brealey and Myers, 1991, p. 923), and as a result of this, it was not possible to completely clarify the reasons behind emerging M&A waves, especially in developing countries; for this reason in these countries, there is a different story. In the past thirty years, the Iranian banking industry witnessed two waves of M&A. The later one commenced in 2011 and is still in progress. This study investigates the reasons behind emerging M&A waves in the industry by using the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The data for this study were collected from 113 bank managers. The results show that Iranian banking industry M&A wave is driven by three main forces/factors: macro, industrial, and corporate, which come from: I) Develop the business and acquire competitive advantage, II) Stakeholders’ pressures, III) Government pressure, IV) Lack of banking licenses, and V) Organize the money market by government.