HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh has said that the group "thankfully" did not look at acquiring Bank of Rajasthan, as it is yet to overcome the pressures of previous takeovers.
Bank of Rajasthan last month announced its merger in an all-share deal valued at over Rs 3,000 crore with ICICI Bank, the country's largest private sector lender and a rival of HDFC Bank.
"It's herculean job dealing with hundreds of thousands of people and four-five hundred branches, how to make it viable, how to change the work habits. We went through it. Times Bank we acquired, then we acquired this (Centurion Bank of Punjab)," Parekh told PTI in an interview.
The country's second largest private sector lender HDFC Bank had acquired Times Bank in 2000 and Centurion Bank of Punjab in 2008.
"See we were tired, we were fatigued after the Centurion Bank of Punjab and we were still struggling to get it right. So, it was too soon. We were not physically fit, mentally fit to tackle another acquisition and turn it around," he said.
"It was too soon for us to acquire (Bank of Rajasthan). As I said we were tired, we have still not recovered fully after the Centurion acquisition. So, we didn't even look at it thankfully," Parekh said.
He also clarified that Bank of Rajasthan did not come to HDFC Bank for the possible acquisition deal.
Last month, Bank of Rajasthan decided to merge itself with ICICI Bank through share swap ratio of 25:118. The shareholders of Udaipur-based bank would get 25 shares of ICICI Bank for every 118 shares of Bank of Rajasthan.
Post-merger, ICICI Bank's branch network would grow to close to 2,500 across the country, as against HDFC Bank's around 1,800 branches.
The per-branch valuation was a key benchmark in both the deals, the mergers of ICICI Bank and BoR as also the one between HDFC Bank and CBoP. While BoR was valued at about Rs six crore per branch, that for CBoP was about Rs 25 crore.
Asked if it rankled him that BoR did not come to HDFC Bank and rather went to ICICI Bank, Parekh said: "Not at all."