It's not just Unicredit that has set its sights on Commerzbank. The German banking giant is also interested in the Dutch Ing, that he would have appointed the Perella Weinberg Partners boutique to follow the negotiations in view of a possible integration with Commerzbank. The news was released by several newspapers, which cite sources close to Ing.
On the other hand, Ralph Hamers, CEO of the Dutch bank, had already expressed his interest in the German bank last April. Hamers is said to be in contact these days with Commerzbank's number one, Martin Zielke, to whom he allegedly proposed a merger between the two banks, granting certain guarantees that aim to convince not only the German manager, but above all the public shareholder, who owns 15% of Commerzbank and that in the end he will have to decide who to sell his stake to.
In particular, Ing would have ensured that the headquarters of the group would be moved to Frankfurt and that the number of layoffs would be lower to that proposed by Deutsche Bank, another giant that in the past studied the hypothesis of a marriage with Commerzbank (later waned due to too many redundancies requested).
Still according to what was reported by the press, there would be however other suitors, including Bnp Paribas and Santander, as well as the Italian Unicredit, which has been repeatedly identified as a possible buyer of the German institute and continues to be considered a suitor despite the CEO Jean Pierre Mustier having denied the rumors, specifying that no mandate relating to possible market operations has been signed.
The only one however, this hypothesis is sufficient to agitate the yellow-green government. The fear is that, after a possible Unicredit-Commerzbank merger, the Italian part of the new group would turn into a sort of "bad bank", while the best assets would be placed in Germany. The heart of the post-merger bank would therefore be Germanocentric, and moreover subject to the influence of the public shareholder in Berlin. lsdlocke
