DEUTSCHE-COMMERZ BANK MERGER: TO CREATE A BIGGER WHIRLWIND

Here's a story that has me wondering, and apparently it has other people wondering too because many people passed it along this week. What has me wondering is that it now seems "semi-official", for Deutsche Bank and Germany's other large mega-bank, Commerz Bank are in merger talks.  To my non-financial mind, that's rather like saying a tornado and a hurricane are in merger talks. But there's something in this story - or rather, not in this story - that give me pause:

Deutsche And Commerzbank Begin Formal Merger Talks: This Is What The Combined Bank Will Look Like

The story appears straightforward enough, for talks about mergers between the two giants have been off-and-on-and-off again for many years, but this time there's a catch: the German Finance Ministry is "ok" with the merger:

“We confirm that we are engaging in discussions with Commerzbank,” Deutsche Bank said at midday on Sunday in a regulatory statement, adding that “there is no certainty that any transaction will occur”. Similarly, Commerzbank informed investors that both lenders “have agreed today to start discussions with an open outcome on a potential merger”.

A detailed due diligence process would commence next week when the banks would set up a number of committees to explore specific questions the FT reported, noting that talks would start immediately.  The Wall Street Journal and other media previosuly reported earlier that the two lenders’ chief executives were speaking about a potential deal, with the WSJ adding that the German finance ministry stands ready to support a deal.

But there's two paragraphs here that caught my attention, for they're implying that "thing that's not being talked about":

Deutsche Bank, which is far more dependent on trading and investment-banking businesses, has lost market share in core areas, ceding business to stronger U.S. banks. Deutsche Bank has struggled with higher funding costs than many rivals, making profits harder to come by for each euro in revenue the bank earns.

As the Journal adds, DB executives suggested a combined Commerz-Deutsche Bank would benefit from lower funding costs, using a bigger pool of retail deposits to its advantage. Whether that will be sufficient to offset the exodus of the bank's top bankers who have been denied bonus increases for two years, remains to be seen. (Emphasis added)

And there's one more bit of information that has me scratching my head:

A combination of the two banks would result in a behemoth with €1.8 trillion in assets, over 140,000 global employees and nearly €34 billion in revenue yet generating a paltry €1.1 billion in net income.

I don't know about you, but to my non-bankster's eyes, those numbers don't exactly add up to a picture of "health", and as the article also notes, a merger would reduce Germany's number of "players" in the international bankster racket from two, to just one, and on top of that, as the article also observes, that merger would barely make a dent in Germany's domestic deposit banking. But there's something implied, and not explicitly stated in all this, and herewith is my high octane speculation of the day: Deutsche Bank, as the article notes, is "far more dependent on trading and investment-banking", and a merger with Commerz would give it "a bigger pool of retail deposits" to use. That little juxtaposition sent my suspicion meter into the red zone, for Deutsche Bank, as I recall, was left holding a big share of the credit default swaps and securities bundles after the 2008 bailouts; it's as if the article is tacitly admitting that Deutsche Bank is on a hunt for cash to shore up its books and balance out those toxic assets, with the result that a merger generates more revenue, but still yields only "a paltry 1.1 billion euros" as net income (note the careful avoidance of the word profit).

What we're left with is where we started: merging these two banks looks like yet another patch to an increasingly fraying quilt, or perhaps better put and as I suggested at the beginning of this blog, a merger between a tornado and a hurricane. Whichever metaphor one prefers, this has the feel of another stopgap measure, and perhaps shades of things to come, because if I'm right, and that more than fourteen quadrillion dollars' worth of derivatives that no one is talking about (and whatever percentage of that is on Deutsche Bank's books) is what's really behind this. Apparently space isn't moving fast enough to re-balance everyone's books. If that's the case, then we might expect more such mergers in the future.

Just a thought...

See you on the flip side...

 

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

8 Comments

  1. Foglamp on March 24, 2019 at 8:36 pm

    I think Dr Farrell is right to highlight the retail deposits. These will not only shore up DB’s scary balance sheet pro tem. Under the EU’s bail-in regulations, when the bank’s insolvency is in due course recognized, the retail deposits will be sacrificed (ritual?) to reduce the losses of the bank’s institutional counter-parties.



    • Foglamp on March 24, 2019 at 8:38 pm

      Less a whirlwind. More a vortex gurgling round a plug hole!



  2. DanaThomas on March 21, 2019 at 1:54 pm

    Whenever I go past a Deutsche Bank branch I just can’t help laughing.



  3. marcos toledo on March 20, 2019 at 6:36 pm

    Think loan sharks on steroids.



  4. goshawks on March 20, 2019 at 5:01 pm

    Joseph: “…the German Finance Ministry is ‘ok’ with the merger…”

    Hmmm. Well, we all know that government officials are ‘put in place’ after they have been vetted for, shall we say, compliance to Higher Directives. So, in this case, okay with the merger means that somebody well up in the Financial Class has said, “Let it be so.”

    This leads to Why ? (at this time). My guess is that the PTB have (a) seen a financial crisis on the horizon and are moving to shore-up DB or (b) they are preparing a financial crisis and are moving to shore-up DB. Remember those credit default swaps from the last financial crisis? They are likely still on DB’s books (or at least DB is liable for any further losses), and so any serious financial crisis will have DB being the next Lehman Brothers or at least AIG. Acting preemptively with this merger may be an attempt to provide DB with ‘reserves’ for when the plunge happens. (And/or, as Philippe Giguere posted below, it may be a way to scam further depositors…)



  5. Beckysue on March 20, 2019 at 3:09 pm

    Yup. And our boy Trump is supposedly in debt to Deutschebank for a bundle.



  6. Robert Barricklow on March 20, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    Tru$t U$
    All we need is more of your money/Tru$t.
    Like a black hole need more and more Tru$t to grow or?
    Go bu$t?
    Merger$ increa$e money $uppy to increa$e leverage to increase credit to increase more money creation.
    Merger$ are not a choice; increa$e, or become decea$ed.
    Tru$t is ba$ed on growth.
    No growth; the model goes bu$t.

    in other words,
    You can’t taper a ponzi scheme.



  7. Philippe Giguere on March 20, 2019 at 6:47 am

    What the articles seem to hint at is that DB may need a lot of help to meet its liquidity ratio (speculative of course).

    There are 2 liquidity ratios under the Basel Frameworl :
    > Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR)
    > Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR).
    Ex: https://www.bis.org/fsi/fsisummaries/nsfr.htm

    The NSFR ratio relates the bank’s available stable funding to its required stable funding, as summarised in the following formula (by time buckets):

    To determine total ASF and RSF amounts, factors reflecting supervisory assumptions are assigned to the bank’s sources of funding and to its exposures, with these factors reflecting the liquidity characteristics of each category of instruments.

    Retail deposits are very good to help a bank meet its NSFR because Retail deposits are considered highly liquid assets (they increase the ASF part of the ratio).

    In comparison, worthless derivatives or off balance sheet stuff that no one wants and that are not traded openly (called over the counter financial instruments) is worthless from an ASF perspective.

    My reading of the merger is that it must be required.
    > Choice 1 – They let it go bust (financial crisis on steroids)
    > Choice 2 – They merge it with a retail bank increasing ASF and perhaps avoiding a crisis of epic proportion.

    What people need to know is that in the EU, under discreetly post crisis changed laws, retail deposits are considered unsecured loans to banks.

    Meaning, that in the case of a default of the new even more too big to fail financial institution, the german retail clients of the new bank are not at a much higher risk of being wiped out…

    International creditors of this institutions (ex derivative trading partners) are considered priority creditors and are paid 1st.

    Should choice 2 go bad, and not save the newly proposed institution, and failing additional quantitative easing magic or other divine interventions, a new epic financial crisis could occur.

    This is speculative of course, but this is what this blog is about. Fun (but creepy) speculation.



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