By Foo Yun Chee and Valentina Za
BRUSSELS/ROME, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Italy’s UniCredit is set to secure unconditional EU antitrust approval for its acquisition of Germany’s second biggest bank Commerzbank, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The European Commission’s approval underscores the regulatory push for cross-border financial mergers to create European champions. It will come on the heels of the European Central Bank’s green light for the deal last month.
UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said on Monday that all the remaining regulatory approvals for UniCredit to take control of Commerzbank would come before the end of November, sooner than anticipated.
The Commission and UniCredit both declined to comment.
The Commission, which is the EU competition enforcer, is due to decide on the deal by November 16.
The EU watchdog initially had some concerns about whether Berlin’s demand that the government keeps two supervisory board seats at Commerzbank complied with EU laws, the people said.
The German government, which still owns 13.3% of Commerzbank, has been able to name two of the 10 shareholder representatives on the 20-strong supervisory board since bailing out the bank during the global financial crisis.
However, UniCredit has said it wants to appoint all of the shareholder representatives, which would leave no room for the two seats the bank has reserved for the government since its 2009 rescue.
Regulators expect the issue to be resolved in time for the EU green light in mid-November or if not, for it to be examined at a later stage, one of the people said.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Valentina Za; Editing by Susan Fenton)
