UniCredit’s voluntary public exchange offer for Commerzbank closes on Tuesday, June 16, capping a six-week saga that has managed to unite German politicians, labor unions, and Commerzbank’s own board in collective opposition. The Italian bank already owns 34.4% of Commerzbank.
The offer, launched on May 5, proposed swapping 0.485 UniCredit shares for each Commerzbank share, implying a valuation somewhere between approximately €30.8 and €35.76 per share. At announcement, that worked out to a roughly 4% premium. The offer has been trading at a discount relative to where Commerzbank shares sit on the open market.
A bid the board didn’t want
Commerzbank’s board formally rejected the takeover offer on May 18, barely two weeks after it went live. The reasons were layered: no meaningful premium, concerns about UniCredit’s ongoing operations in Russia, and the specter of up to 11,000 job cuts that a combination could trigger.
The Frankfurt-based lender has been pushing its own “Momentum 2030” strategy, and management has argued that shareholders would extract more value from an independent Commerzbank than from one folded into an Italian parent.
