UniCredit acquires 9% stake in Commerzbank

By Adria Calatayud

Italy’s UniCredit acquired a 9% stake in smaller German bank Commerzbank, buying shares from the German government and on the market, and said it would seek regulatory approval for further purchases.

The Italian lender, one of the euro zone’s largest banks, said on Wednesday it would work with Commerzbank to explore value-adding options and would file regulatory filings seeking approval to potentially exceed its 9.9% stake.

UniCredit said the regulatory filing is designed to preserve flexibility and that any decision on whether to participate will depend on whether the investment meets its financial parameters.

The move could reignite talk of a potential UniCredit-Commerzbank merger, which has been the subject of speculation in the past and which analysts have considered possible, as well as consolidation among European banks more broadly. It comes at a time when Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria is pursuing a hostile takeover of smaller rival Banco de Sabadell.

UniCredit Chief Executive Andrea Orcel said earlier this year that his bank was interested in acquisitions, but only if they made sense for shareholders.

The bank said it had bought a 4.49% stake in Commerzbank from the German government and the rest through market activity. UniCredit said it supported Commerzbank’s management and supervisory boards and the progress they had made in improving the bank’s results.

The German financial agency said earlier on Wednesday it had sold its first block of shares in crisis-era Commerzbank for 702 million euros, reducing its stake from 16.49% to 12%. The entire block of shares was sold to UniCredit, which outbid all other offers, the agency said.

The decision comes after Commerzbank announced late on Tuesday evening that CEO Manfred Knof will step down when his contract expires at the end of 2025.

The German government sold its Commerzbank shares for 13.20 euros apiece, a premium to the bank’s closing price of 12.60 euros on Tuesday, the agency said. The government remains Commerzbank’s largest shareholder after the sale, the agency said.

The German government last week unveiled plans to begin selling shares in Commerzbank that it amassed during the 2008 financial crisis, the latest move by a European government to divest itself of stakes in banks it acquired to stabilise its financial system.

“Commerzbank has once again shown that it stands on its own feet,” said Eva Grunwald, board member of the German financial agency.

The agency said it had committed to a 90-day restriction on the sale of further shares, with some exceptions that were not detailed.

Write to Adria Calatayud at [email protected]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 11, 2024, 03:20 ET (07:20 GMT)