Cerberus is gradually withdrawing from Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.
(Photo: REUTERS)
Frankfurt Better to end with horror than horror without end. In the business world, this is especially true when a lot of money is involved that can currently be invested lucratively elsewhere: The US financial investor Cerberus surrenders to Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank and initiates the withdrawal.
The bet made by the “hellhound” to turn the two low-yield, immobile German banks into lively financial groups that can survive in the digital world and are internationally competitive has not worked out – at least not as quickly as hoped.
The fact that Cerberus is now selling blocks of shares at a loss says a lot about how big the disappointment was in the end. Persevering in a year in which the interest rate turnaround comes and gives the financial sector worldwide a tailwind was apparently not an option. Instead, even more blocks of shares are likely to be thrown onto the market soon. The exit is quick and painless.
Is there any cause for glee in Frankfurt? No! Perhaps Christian Sewing and Manfred Knof let out a sigh of relief, according to the motto: one less problem. In any case, part of the truth is that the uncomfortable activist among major investors has done both Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the past five years.
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Cerberus asked the right questions: about costs, about personnel – at Commerzbank right through to top management – and, last but not least, about the major strategic question of what role the two institutes actually want or can play in the consolidation of the sector in Europe. The Anglo-Saxon view of things does not tolerate waste, neither in resources nor in opportunities.
Dirty methods
Whether Cerberus always played fair is another question. At Deutsche Bank, the investor temporarily performed a controversial dual role as an internal advisor and presumably earned well from it. At Commerzbank, Cerberus dismantled the then CEO Martin Zielke in public in 2020 and then chased him from the farm. These are dirty methods, no doubt.
What remains is probably also for the Americans the realization that large listed banks with tens of thousands of employees, historically grown structures and zero reserves cannot be restructured as quickly as small institutes – see the former HSH Nordbank, in which Cerberus is making the radical cut back relatively silently accompanied. The restructuring of large banks is a mammoth project. One can only wish Sewing and Knof that their drive doesn’t let up now.
More: Withdrawal of Cerberus weighs on shares in Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank