Deutsche Bank Cleared Merger Hurdle With Green Light on Cuts
- Finance Ministry signaled it won’t block deep job reductions
- Plenty of stumbling blocks remain in talks with Commerzbank
After months of informal talks and weeks of increasingly fevered speculation, Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing finally got the green light he needed to proceed with negotiations on a tie-up with crosstown rival Commerzbank AG.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz agreed not to oppose the tens of thousands of job cuts needed to make a deal between Germany’s two biggest publicly traded banks work, Sewing was told, according to people familiar with the matter. In the preceding days, employee representatives at both lenders announced their opposition to a merger that risks eliminating as many 30,000 positions -- more than one out of five of the combined workforce. That’s when Sewing sought assurances that the government had his back.