WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Commerzbank CEO Bettina Orlopp said on Friday that the lender was focusing on its standalone strategy, reiterating her stance as Italy’s UniCredit expresses interest in a possible tie-up.
“We really focus on us, on our standalone strategy,” Orlopp said at a financial conference in Washington.
UniCredit has sparked outrage in Germany by becoming the biggest private investor in Commerzbank and preparing the ground to potentially become its single biggest shareholder, leapfrogging the Berlin government which owns 12%.
UniCredit’s action, which will require European Central Bank approval, is widely seen as a test of the independence of the ECB and the future of the European banking union.
UniCredit bought a 9% Commerzbank stake in September, including from the German government, and used derivatives to raise its holding to nearly 21%, conditional on supervisory approval.
The Italian bank has said it could either raise or cut the stake, having bought protection to limit any losses linked to market moves.
Orlopp said the bank was working on a strategy and would come up with an updated plan.
“We are not at an end,” she said.
The CEO of UniCredit’s German operations, Marion Hoellinger, told a German newspaper in an article published on Friday that UniCredit was not interested in a hostile takeover.
But Hoellinger, speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, also made the case for a possible tie-up, saying it would be good for the medium-sized companies known as the Mittelstand that are critical for Germany’s economy.
“Instead of two rather smaller banks for Mittelstand… we would have the opportunity to create an even more powerful Mittelstand bank for Germany,” she was quoted as saying.
(Reporting by Pete Schroeder; Writing by Tom Sims, editing by Kirsti Knolle and Louise Heavens)
