Orcel Faces Fresh Opposition From Merz in Chase for Commerzbank
- UniCredit’s hope for new approach after vote may be misplaced
- Conservative frontrunner could take an even tougher stand
This article is for subscribers only.
If UniCredit SpA Chief Executive Officer Andrea Orcel thought victory for the business-friendly conservatives in next week’s German election might smooth his path to taking control of Commerzbank AG, he seems to have been mistaken.
At a closed-door BlackRock Inc. event in Davos last month attended by global banking heavyweights, Friedrich Merz, whose center-right CDU/CSU alliance has a big lead in the polls, made clear in private what he had been publicly saying for some time: he wants Germany’s second-largest lender to remain independent.