In the aggressive (?) takeover of German Commercebank by Italian Unicredit, Dragi’s game is played, but also the luck of the euro.

These days a strange game is in progress in the eurozone. The Italian banking giant UniCredit attempts to purchase the second largest German bank, which the German State sells. When the first steps of this takeover took place in legal terms with the first placement of Commercebank – a good time as will be with the National in a short time – in Berlin they rose to stop it. Even in the recent past, after such a reaction from Berlin, the procedure would normally have stopped and Unicredit would have adopted a passive waiting or folding attitude. But now that’s not happening. Unicredit (or the Italian Unicredito) not only has made sure to increase its participation to 21% (out of 5% originally purchased by the German State), but announced that it intends to ask the ECB for permission to reach 29%. And thus acquire the right to fully acquire Commercebank. The reaction from the Salts administration was immediate. This is ‘enemy energy’ said from Berlin and activated every mechanism they have to prevent it. All this is happening in an environment where the ECB and the Commission, one of the biggest, if not the biggest problem and the need for the capital adequacy of the Eurozone, are the completion of banking consolidation and the creation of a single European capital market. The cross-border unification of Unicredit with Commercebank, in this sense, should be an act of real positive response to this demand and important step in favour of European integration. Instead, we have a situation where the initial objections to this step go to a higher level of ‘enemy confrontation’, highlighting economic nationalism between Italy and Germany as an open front of confrontation. Even between the first and third economies of the Eurozone in force. And that’s not all. These two economies at the level of industrial production, both in the car industry and food processing and in the chemical industry, are among the most interconnected in the euro area’s single internal market. The German car industry is completely dependent on the production of parts for it in Italy. In other words, economic nationalism and purely protectionism are emerging as a breaking point between the two most connected economies of the eurozone in the heart of Europe. More importantly, in the debt support system over the past decade by the ECB through the national government banks’ government bond markets, the Bundesbank is currently “loaded” with the ECB’s guarantee of course with Italian government debt (bonds) of many tens of billion euros… If one places these developments in the environment created by the Dragi Report on the survival of the Eurozone from the danger of ‘slow agony’ (something like ‘slow death’ in our own) and the relevant warnings, it becomes evident that the internal centrifuge forces in the eurozone, which have been triggered by the consequences of the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, have begun to strengthen dangerously. And we still don’t have a clear picture that can lead. This new reality has already begun to reflect on the slippage of the real value of the euro, as recorded in its relationship with the euro. An example? In late 2020 the Bank of Greece sold the gold pound of England (old cutting) 422 euros. By the end of 2021 the price of the gold pound by the TE had risen to 440 euros. In late 2022 the price of the gold pound by the TE was 467 euros. By the end of 2023 – nine months ago – it had risen to 512 euros. How long is it this morning? Let me see and tell you. Exactly 50% more expensive in less than 4 years. An upward trend steady and increasingly increasing.