Italian lender unicreditA “very aggressive and very vague” presentation of Commerzbank He was criticized by German Finance Minister Jörg Kukes, who stressed that hostile takeovers do not usually succeed.
“In government, we need to protect the integrity and stability of the systemic banking sector,” Kokis told CNBC on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Hostile takeovers in systemic banks tend not to succeed.”
UniCredit now has a 9.5% direct stake and an 18.5% stake via derivatives in Commerzbank, after surprisingly building up a stake in September and thus increasing its position.
Armed with a strong CET1 ratio – a measure of a bank's strength and resilience – by 16.1% As of the third quarter, the Italian bank is seeking permission from the European Central Bank, which oversees the euro zone's largest lenders, to increase its stake in Commerzbank to 29.99%.
The sudden, accelerating pace of UniCredit's pursuit has sparked market speculation that CEO Andrea Ursel — a veteran M&A dealmaker at Merrill Lynch — is eventually targeting a cross-border consolidation.
The move by UniCredit, which is already present in Germany through its HypoVereinsbank subsidiary, has received a lukewarm reception so far from Berlin's divided government, with outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticizing that “unfriendly attacks and hostile takeovers are not a good thing for banks.”
It is possible that the division in domestic politics in December and the upcoming elections will prevent the German administration from closely supervising the deal.
“In this particular case, the potential acquirer's behavior was very aggressive, very opaque, and opaque,” Cookes told CNBC's Karen Tsu and Steve Sedgwick. “Hostile takeovers are not a good thing in systemic banks. So it is all about the details of this case, not a general statement that Germany is not open for business to global investors.”
CNBC has reached out to UniCredit for comment.
Speaking to CNBC back in NovemberJust months after building her surprise stake, Orcel noted: “Let's put it this way: We wouldn't be here if we hadn't been invited to buy that stake. And it all started in a way that we thought was constructive.”
Questions have been raised about the Italian banking group's commitment to the deal by simultaneously launching an ambitious formal takeover bid for its Italian counterpart Banco BPM. In late November.
For its part, Commerzbank pleaded its case by standing alone, with a board member warning against it Huge job losses As a result of integration if the two banks merge.
Appetite for cross-border mergers in Europe has waned somewhat since the controversial 2007 takeover and then split of Dutch bank ABN Amro by a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland, which ultimately led to the collapse of the banks during the financial crisis. UniCredit's Orcel, then a senior investment banker at Merrily Lynch, advised on the deal.
However, analysts describe the process of banking consolidation in the region – and in Germany in particular – as “Long overdueCommerzbank had previously been targeted for takeover by the country's largest bank, Deutsche Bank. Before the blatant collapse of initial talks in 2019.
“The statement that there is no merger and no change in the German banking sector is completely false,” Kokis said on Thursday.
UniCredit and Commerzbank are scheduled to announce their fourth-quarter results on February 10 and February 13, respectively.
