FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Job losses if UniCredit were to take over Commerzbank would probably be “significant” at the German bank’s central offices, while its network would not suffer, the Italian bank’s chief executive said on Thursday.
Speaking in Frankfurt at a conference organised by German newspaper Handelsblatt, UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said his bank saw the German government’s opposition to a full takeover of Commerzbank as a “critical factor”, adding however that a bank’s management had to respond to shareholders, customers and staff, not governments.
Orcel has angered Germany by taking a near 30% stake in Commerzbank and calling for a combination of the country’s second-biggest lender with UniCredit’s local unit HVB.
(Reporting by Tom Sims in Frankfurt and Valentina Za in Milan; editing by Giulia Segreti)
