UniCredit, German government: we will never sell our stake in Commerzbank

The German government has taken a tougher line against Unicredit’s CEO, Andrea Orcel, over his plans to acquire Commerzbank. The federal government will not sell its stake, amounting to around 13 per cent, in the Frankfurt-based bank, according to government sources today. The federal government is the bank’s second-largest shareholder. “Therefore, any plans by UniCredit to delist Commerzbank from the stock exchange are, given Commerzbank’s current structure, practically very difficult to implement. In fact, a delisting or a squeeze-out is hardly possible as long as the federal government holds its shares in Commerzbank,” reports Handelsblatt. Orcel has recently accelerated his takeover plan more quickly than expected. Upon expiry of the acceptance period for its exchange offer to Commerzbank shareholders, the Italian bank has already secured over 39 per cent of the shares and can easily increase its stake to 42.5 per cent, as it announced last Friday.

On the Italian front, the legal battle over the ‘golden power’ exercised at the time by the Meloni government in its attempted takeover of Banco BPM by UniCredit has finally come to an end. The Council of State, it is understood, published the decree on 28 May, signed by the president of the fourth section, Luigi Carbone, declaring the appeal – which had been lodged by UniCredit against the Lazio Regional Administrative Court’s ruling on the ‘golden power’ – to be withdrawn (by UniCredit) (through which, indeed, Palazzo Chigi had imposed various ‘restrictions’ on the bid for the bank based in Piazza Meda).

In recent weeks, rumours had already suggested that UniCredit had decided to drop its appeal, given that the State Legal Service’s defence brief would clarify the specific nature of the Government’s measure. This measure should therefore not set a precedent in the event of any future M&A deals.