Europe’s banking union should refocus on regulatory consistency and transparency, UniCredit chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier tells Euromoney, in an unusually frank recognition of the impracticality of eurozone risk sharing.
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Jean Pierre Mustier, |
Amid new rumours this week of UniCredit’s interest in taking Deutsche Bank’s place on a merger with Commerzbank, Mustier says: “The banking union will never be completed.”
Speaking to Euromoney ahead of the magazine’s official 50th anniversary edition in June, Mustier’s comments contrast with others – notably Société Générale’s chief executive Frédéric Oudéa – who hope that agreement on a European deposit insurance scheme (EDIS) could be a trigger for more cross-border mergers, after this year’s new European Parliament and European Commission.
But the Deutsche deal is thought to have piqued UniCredit’s interest in Commerzbank, because if talks with Deutsche end, Commerz will then be “in play”.
Although he does not link his view to any specific situation, Mustier tells Euromoney: “I cannot see how the European deposit insurance scheme will be completed in my lifetime and I intend to live a very long time.” He thinks that the risk profile of European banks is too different to allow EDIS, which is the banking union’s missing third pillar after the 2014 creation of single supervisory and resolution mechanisms.
