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Italian lender UniCredit increased its stake in Commerzbank to 28% on Wednesday, drawing a stiff rebuke from the German government.
"UniCredit itself emphasizes that the participation in Commerzbank has so far been a pure investment, which could also be dissolved at any time,” deputy government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner said Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. “The German government expects UniCredit to make use of this option.”
UniCredit on Wednesday said the increase “reinforces [the] view that substantial value exists within Commerzbank that needs to be crystallized.”
“The position remains at this time solely an investment,” UniCredit reiterated Wednesday.
Commerzbank, for its part Wednesday, said it had “taken note” of UniCredit’s announcement but had no comment “other than by pointing to our strategy that we continue to implement and are in the process of upgrading,” a spokesperson for the German bank said.
The bank is set to present that strategy to investors Feb. 13, the spokesperson said.
Commerzbank labor representatives on Wednesday called UniCredit’s stake-building “activist and hostile,” according to Bloomberg.
UniCredit’s buy-up, at first glance, appears to contradict assurances the bank’s CEO, Andrea Orcel, made last month — that the Italian lender was content to wait until after Germany’s federal election in February, to make a decision on its Commerzbank investment.
“We can sit on it for a while. It will remain there. It’s not diverting management, it’s not requiring from us anything,” Orcel said Nov. 25.
The comment came as UniCredit launched a €10.1 billion bid for domestic rival Banco BPM, which at the time was thought to be a strategic pivot from Commerzbank.
UniCredit said Wednesday the Commerzbank move “does not have any impact on the public exchange offer with Banco BPM.”
A spokesperson for the German government called UniCredit’s move Wednesday “uncoordinated and unfriendly,” according to Reuters. The spokesperson added the government is “working hard to find a good solution for Germany” but did not offer further details.
Germany’s newly minted finance minister, Jörg Kukies, last month said he “assumed” any attempted takeover of Commerzbank by UniCredit was dead, given the German government’s “very critical” resistance.