FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A merger of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank could put 20,000 jobs at risk, the head of labor union Verdi said in a media interview on Monday, a day after the two banks confirmed they were discussing the possibility.
“Some 20,000 or more positions could come under fire,” Frank Bsirske, chief of Verdi and a supervisory board member at Deutsche Bank, told German newspapers Stuttgarter Zeitung and Stuttgarter Nachrichten.
He said the two lenders were not a good fit for each other, while a crossover in an international direction would make more sense for them.
Merging the German banks’ operations would create overlap in retail and business customer segments, leading to problematic conditions from the workers’ point of view, he added.
“I can’t for the life of me see any sense in this merger at the moment,” Bsirske said.
Reporting by Vera Eckert, Editing by Clarence Fernandez
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