Frankfurt (Germany) (AFP) – Suggestions that German lender Commerzbank was considering cutting thousands of jobs as it fights off an unwanted advance from Italy’s UniCredit had unsettled employees, a senior trade union official said Monday. A plan to significantly reduce the headcount at Germany’s second-largest bank would be presented to the works council in the weeks ahead, the Financial Times daily reported on Saturday, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Frederik Werning, Verdi trade union official and a member of the supervisory board at Germany’s second-largest lender, said rumoured redundancies had caused “uncertainty among employees.” The union’s “absolute priority” was to “consistently represent and defend employees,” Werning said.
Takeover speculation has surrounded Commerzbank since September after Italy’s UniCredit revealed that it had acquired 9.5 percent of the German bank, buying parts of the stake directly from the German government. In December, UniCredit said it had raised its stake in its rival to 28 percent, the majority of which was held through derivatives as it awaits regulatory approval to take direct control of the shares. German law obliges UniCredit to make a takeover offer for the remainder of Commerzbank’s shares if its stake reaches 30 percent.
Reducing the number of employees at the bank would be a way “of making the bank more profitable and thus boosting the share price, making an acquisition more difficult,” a source close to the lender told AFP. Commerzbank shares were up three percent on Monday, making it the top performer on Germany’s blue-chip DAX index.
Commerzbank CEO Bettina Orlopp in December refused to rule out redundancies in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, saying that reducing costs was “a constant challenge for any business — whether or not there is a merger.” Investors and the public would receive an “update of the bank’s strategy, which is currently in preparation” on February 13, a Commerzbank spokeswoman said. Since 2021, Commerzbank has already cut thousands of jobs, bringing its headcount down to some 42,000 and closing hundreds of branches in a major restructuring effort.
© 2024 AFP
