FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank has cleared a major regulatory hurdle between UniCredit and control of Commerzbank, leaving a German lender that resisted the Italian bank for almost two years to deal with the shareholder it tried to keep out.
UniCredit said on Thursday that the ECB had authorised it to cross 30 percent of Commerzbank and to keep adding shares with no upper limit. The news lands hardest in Berlin, where the Merz coalition, whose finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, has pressed UniCredit for guarantees, has watched its leverage thin as the Italian bank’s stake closed in on half the company.
The numbers have rough edges. Euronews reported in August that UniCredit held 47.59 percent of Commerzbank’s shares, equal to 49.65 percent of voting rights once the German bank’s own shares are excluded. A month later it described the holding only as “nearly 50%.” UniCredit expects to reach roughly 50 percent of voting rights when the remaining regulatory steps and offer conditions are completed toward the end of the year, and Euronews’s lead says control follows from 2027. The argument has changed shape: it is no longer whether UniCredit may own Commerzbank, but what it will do with it.
UniCredit said the decision confirms “the European Central Bank’s positive assessment of the transaction,” Euronews reported. That account rests on the bank’s own statement. The report carried no separate ECB statement and no reply from Commerzbank, so the central bank’s reasoning is not public in anything TEH could find.
Berlin has not hidden its priorities. After meeting UniCredit’s chief executive in September, Klingbeil said in a statement that it was “of paramount importance to the federal government that Commerzbank can continue to fulfil its vital role in financing the German economy,” and that Berlin expects the bank to remain a “listed company headquartered in Frankfurt,” according to Euronews.
Berlin’s remaining cards are modest. The state’s holding was put at roughly 12 percent in September and at 12.7 percent in August, when Euronews noted that some senior figures were reportedly ready to discuss a sale if a shared strategy came first. That was not yet an official government decision, Euronews said. It added that the ECB, in principle inclined not to oppose the deal, had warned that integration would be complex and potentially lengthy.
What none of this settles is whether Berlin will trade that stake for the guarantees it has asked for, or keep it as a minority voice in a bank that may soon be run from Milan.
