Unicredit will not attend the Commerzbank meeting

UniCredit will not attend Commerzbank's annual general meeting, according to Bloomberg. With this choice, in fact, the bank of Piazza Gae Aulenti will stay away from the main event that gathers the German bank's shareholders at a time of strong tensions with its top management, given the attempted takeover underway by the Italian bank.

While the takeover bid on the German group is ongoing, UniCredit did not register the Commerzbank shares held in its portfolio by the 13 May deadline. Without this registration, UniCredit will not be able to take part in the shareholders' meeting, which is scheduled for 20 May. Representatives of UniCredit and Commerzbank declined to comment.

The move comes as Piazza Gae Aulenti is trying to acquire Commerzbank, which has a capitalisation of around EUR 40 billion and has already rejected the EUR 37 billion bid as too low. The German government, which owns about 12% of the bank, also opposes the deal.

UniCredit directly holds 26.77% of Commerzbank, a position that makes it the largest shareholder, and it also has convertible derivatives (total return swaps) on a further 3.22% of the capital. In all this rises to 8.88% (it was 6.67%) the derivatives settled exclusively in cash and thus not involving the delivery of further shares. The group led by Andrea Orcel strongly criticised the German bank's performance, arguing the need to reduce the international network and cut costs.