Deals
Fixing Deutsche Bank: Inside German Push for a Merger
- Germany is keen to avoid another tax-funded banking bailout
- Creating a German giant would be a risky political gambit
The Deutsche Bank campus office building in Frankfurt.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A week after Christian Sewing took charge at Deutsche Bank AG in April, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s newly appointed finance minister, Olaf Scholz, buttonholed the chief executive officer of Germany’s largest lender at an event in Berlin.
The 15-minute exchange -- between canapes and ceremonial speeches in a Prussian palace at the German banking association’s annual reception -- marked the start of a rapprochement between Merkel’s government and the embattled financial giant. Since then, Sewing and other Deutsche Bank executives have had contact with Finance Ministry officials on average every two weeks, a noticeable change after years of chilly relations.