Rob Hunt may stay on for a while longer as managing director of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, the Herald Sun reported.Hunt was due to retire in July 2009. The board now wants him to remain at least until the end of next year in order for credit markets to settle and in order to give the board more time to evaluate options for his replacement.Continuity may also suit the bank's strategic agenda. Talk is circulating of a fresh effort to negotiate terms for a merger between Bendigo and Adelaide Bank and Bank of Queensland, this time driven by Bendigo.Bendigo spurned a hostile offer from BOQ in early 2007. Bendigo Bank, as it then was, instead opted to merge with Adelaide Bank, a merger agreed only one day before the credit crisis erupted in August 2007.