TANGO: Managing the Merger of Postbank and ING Bank

The case shows how two banks, the Dutch Postbank and ING, merged into one bank to expand in a highly competitive financial market. Over the period of four years (2007 - 2010), the project team of the merger (TANGO) faced significant challenges, not only on an organizational level (building understanding and acceptance among employees, integrating different IT systems, laying off employees), but also on a customer level (creating understanding and acceptance among consumers; establishing a new brand) as well as on a socio-political level (dealing with the demands of unions, the Dutch central bank DNB and the supervisory organization AFM). Successful dealing with these different types of challenges was critical to the success of the merger. The case describes the strategic steps that the TANGO team took to steer the merger to a success: one of the strategic steps, as the case focuses on, is how the company created understanding and acceptance around the merger among key stakeholders (employees, clients, regulators etc).