UniCredit SpA’s investment in Commerzbank AG shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the relevant parties, the Italian lender’s chief executive officer Andrea Orcel said in a bid to address some concerns after disclosing a 9% stake in the German bank.
 
The German government was “well aware” that UniCredit had already built up a 4.5% stake in Commerzbank before buying the additional holdings directly from the German state earlier this week, Orcel said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Thursday. 

The purchase, which could be the opening move of a potential full takeover, shouldn’t have “surprised anybody” given UniCredit had been transparent on its M&A plans “for a long time”, he added.

UniCredit’s disclosure of its swelling stake in Commerzbank on Wednesday jolted much of Germany, with people familiar with the matter telling Bloomberg News that Berlin had no advance warning that the Italian firm would swoop in to buy the tranche it offered for sale. Orcel’s comments highlight how he’s seeking to push back against the perception that he bypassed the German government in his effort to build a European banking giant.

The German Finance Ministry wasn’t aware that UniCredit already held a stake in Commerzbank before its own share sale had advanced to a stage where it would have been impossible to cancel it, according to a ministry official. The official declined to be identified discussing private information.

Germany had expected that a slew of different investors would purchase the Commerzbank shares it’s offloading after acquiring them in a crisis-era bailout, Bloomberg News reported earlier. A powerful German labour union known as Verdi has said it’s opposed to a potential acquisition of Commerzbank by UniCredit.

“We participated in a transparent process and we were selected to buy the stake” from the government, which implies it saw no issue with UniCredit coming in, Orcel said. 

“I would have thought all the relevant stakeholders were well aware of what we were doing,” Orcel said. “We would not have moved otherwise.”

  - Bloomberg