Unicredit's Commerzbank push leaves Deutsche Bank as Germany's last independent big bank

Where things stand

Unicredit's pursuit of Commerzbank has reached the point where German commentators are weighing what a completed deal would mean for the country's banking landscape as a whole. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a successful takeover would place four of Germany's five former major banks under the roof of the Milan-based group, concentrating in Italian hands a set of institutions that once defined German finance. The move is presented not as an isolated transaction but as the closing stage of a longer consolidation in which Germany's traditional big-bank tier has steadily disappeared into other owners. That would leave Deutsche Bank as the only one of the five still standing on its own, a position the FAZ frames with a qualification: independence no longer implies pre-eminence, and the paper describes Deutsche Bank as no longer in the first rank. The stated conclusion rests on the takeover actually being completed, which at this stage remains a scenario rather than a fact; no completion, timetable or terms have been confirmed in the material at hand. The immediate question the topic raises is therefore less about the mechanics of the bid than about what a single remaining domestically owned major bank would mean for Germany, and whether that status carries the weight it once did.

Germany historically had five institutions counted as major banks, the top tier of its commercial banking sector. Over time most of them have ceased to be independent, having been absorbed by other owners, so that the group has shrunk to a small number of surviving names. Unicredit, the Milan-based banking group, has been pushing to take over Commerzbank, one of the remaining German institutions. Should that succeed, four of the original five would belong to Unicredit, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Deutsche Bank would then be the last of them still independent, though the FAZ notes it is no longer in the first rank of banks.