Last month, the office of the Federal Cartel of Germany approved the second plan of the Italian lender to buy a major participation in Commerzbank supported by the State.
Unicredit revealed last year that he had obtained a position of approximately 28%, with plans to increase it to 29.9%, just less than the 30%threshold forcing him to submit a public offer for the whole bank.
A week later, however, Unicredit said that his candidacy not asked by 10 billion euros for the national banco BPM rival had blocked after the Italian government imposed conditions within the framework of its so-called golden rules of gold, which allowed the State to block or place restrictions in control of companies in strategic sectors. Citing requirements for credit management and liquidity, asset sales and its remaining operations in Russia, the bank said that it was unable to make decisions at the moment. Unicredit is one of the rare world banks not to leave Russia following the large -scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. CEO Andrea Orcel said that he would not harm shareholders by selling assets at an unjust price.
If European banks continue to generate lower investment return compared to some of their global peers, and the sector remains somewhat fragmented according to national lines, Orcel is certainly not to blame. The bank recently declared record profits and actively pursues a daring strategy of mergers and acquisitions across the continent.
Orcel, which earlier in his career worked at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, was CEO of UBS Investment Bank for the most part of the 2010s. Since he became a head of Unicredit in 2021, the lender’s share price increased by six times. With the acquisition by Unicredit of the participation of Commerzbank, the largest cross -border banking agreement in Europe since the global financial crisis, Orcel has strengthened its reputation for prolific rain director. However, the resistance he met with unions and politicians in Germany and Italy does not increase well for the EU banking sector as a whole, which is faced with an urgent need for consolidation and a more integrated and more profitable framework.