UniCredit buys Commerzbank stake from Berlin in breakthrough deal

The biggest European bank merger in years could be in the works, after Italy’s UniCredit seized a rare opportunity to expand its presence in the continent’s biggest market.

The Milan-based institution said on Wednesday it had bought a 9 percent stake in Commerzbank, Germany’s second-largest private-sector bank, and will now seek regulatory approval to raise its stake further.

The move was opportunistic, with UniCredit outbidding all other participants in a block sale of 4.5 percent offered by the government. The Italians also accumulated another 4.5 percent on the open market. The price paid by UniCredit —  €13.20 a share — was barely half of what the government had paid when it bailed Commerzbank out in 2009 after the global financial crisis.

The move breathes new life into an old vision, at a moment when European governments are being urged to break taboos to stop the continent’s slow descent into global irrelevance.

The building of authentic, pan-European banks with the scale to mobilize finance as effectively as their U.S. peers has been a European pipe dream for years, and a corollary of official initiatives to create a true single market for banking.

However, both private and official efforts have always been thwarted by local vested interests.

Germany’s refusal to accept a foreign takeover of Commerzbank had been a symptom of that parochialism. Back in 2018, UniCredit, BNP Paribas and Dutch-based ING Groep reportedly all made informal approaches to Berlin for its stake. Instead, the government leaned on Deutsche Bank to create a national champion — only to find out that Christian Sewing, who had just taken over as CEO, was more concerned with fixing Deutsche’s own internal problems.

As a result, nothing happened.

“Political resistance to cross-border consolidation in the European banking sector has decreased, especially in Germany,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank. “As the Draghi report again highlighted, progress towards a true banking and capital markets union would be good for the European economy.”

But political obstacles still remain, not least in view of the threat of job losses, should UniCredit take Commerzbank over. It already has a strong presence in Germany through its HypoVereinsbank unit, and the potential to cut costs and raise efficiency after a merger is clear.

“The federal government must keep its stake in Commerzbank for the foreseeable future to prevent a takeover,” Frank Wernecke, chairman of the Ver.di union that represents thousands of Commerzbank staff, said in a statement.

This story has been updated.