Last month, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office approved Italy’s second-largest lender’s plan to purchase a major stake in state-backed Commerzbank.
UniCredit revealed last year that it had secured a position of around 28%, with plans to increase it to 29.9%, just short of the 30% threshold requiring it to submit a public bid for the entire bank.
A week later, however, UniCredit said its €10 billion unsolicited bid for domestic rival Banco BPM had stalled after the Italian government imposed conditions under its so-called Golden Power rules, which allow the state to block or place restrictions on corporate takeovers in strategic sectors. Citing requirements for credit and liquidity management, asset disposals, and its remaining operations in Russia, the bank stated that it was not in a position to make any decisions at this time. UniCredit is one of the few global banks that chose not to exit Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. CEO Andrea Orcel stated he would not harm shareholders by selling assets at an unfair price.
If European banks continue to generate lower returns on investment compared to some of their global peers, and the sector remains somewhat fragmented along national lines, Orcel is certainly not to blame. The bank has recently reported record profits and is actively pursuing a bold strategy of mergers and acquisitions across the continent.
Orcel, who earlier in his career worked at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, was CEO of UBS Investment Bank for most of the 2010s. Since he became head of UniCredit in 2021, the lender’s stock price has increased sixfold. With UniCredit’s acquisition of Commerzbank’s stake, the largest cross-border banking deal in Europe since the global financial crisis, Orcel strengthened his reputation as a prolific rainmaker. Still, the resistance he met from unions and politicians in Germany and Italy doesn’t bode well for the EU banking sector as a whole, which is facing a pressing need for consolidation and a more integrated, profitable framework.
