Commerzbank is open for dialogue with UniCredit after rebuffing the Italian bank’s takeover offer, the German bank’s CEO Bettina Orlopp said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.
“We were a little bit surprised by the fact that they believe that we are not listening to them and that we are not open to a dialogue, because we are,” she said. “We have said that we will always talk about a business combination agreement whenever there is something like a draft proposal on the table.”
UniCredit this month accused Commerzbank of failing to engage in talks about a potential transaction after Commerzbank rejected UniCredit’s €35 billion takeover proposal.
Orlopp said talks between the two over the past weeks made it “pretty clear that we do not have a shared vision on a future business model and… we clearly are in disagreement about the valuations.”