The effect of the HDFC-HDFC?Bank merger will be for the bigger space of the Indian financial sector and not just limited to the banking sector. The large finance companies have practically no benefit of regulatory arbitrage. Earlier, such arbitrage between banks and NBFCs was normal. The logic of the merger is very clear - the cost of borrowing of banks is lower.

I kept insisting that Rs 100 notes were in short supply and there was an urgent need to augment the supply of 100 rupee notes while also rapidly bringing into circulation the proposed new Rs 500 notes. But this was easier said than done because all the note printing machines of the RBI were programmed for printing Rs 2,000 notes and required at least three weeks before the machines could print the new Rs 500 currency notes. The availability of currency paper posed another major bottleneck, and it had to be imported. It was decided to immediately start printing the Rs 500 notes. It was only when the supply of the new Rs 500 notes started improving and the process of change of cassettes at the ATMs gathered momentum that the situation began limping back to normal. A fascinating excerpt from former SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar's The Custodian of Trust: A Banker's Memoir, five years after demonetisation, November 8.