Economy
German government officially rejects UniCredit’s offer for Commerzbank
Germany on Tuesday formally rejected UniCredit’s offer for Commerzbank shares, citing a low price and concerns about what it called the Italian lender’s aggressive approach.
UniCredit’s initial offer period for Commerzbank shares is winding down, with both banks digging in their heels in the months-long battle for control of one of Germany’s most important lenders.
On Monday, the Italian bank hailed the fact that it had exceeded the 30% threshold it had set for this takeover bid. The Milan-based lender launched its bid, valued at 35 billion euros ($40.6 billion), in early May to gain control of its German rival and cement its status as a European heavyweight.
The German government holds a 12% stake in Commerzbank acquired in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and has long objected to UniCredit’s campaign for a tie-up.
“Accepting the offer was already not an option from a financial point of view, as it does not include an appropriate premium on the current share price of Commerzbank’s shares,” the country’s finance agency said on Tuesday.
Despite Berlin’s position, UniCredit could still win control of the German bank, but the government’s stake gives it seats on Commerzbank’s supervisory board, which appoints management and helps oversee its strategy.
Financial Market Stabilization Fund, which manages the government’s holdings, also said that it supported Commerzbank’s independence, and noted that the bank played a critical role in financing medium-sized Mittelstand companies and was an integral player in Frankfurt, the nation’s financial hub.
“Both must continue to be ensured in the future,” it said.
Separately, Frankfurt prosecutors on Tuesday confirmed that they had begun a preliminary investigation into “possible market manipulation” related to the offer, without providing details.
It follows a criminal complaint filed by Commerzbank’s workers’ council that reached prosecutors on Sunday. The employee group had communicated to staff that they would file the complaint against unspecified persons amid questions about UniCredit’s acquisition of Commerzbank shares at a below-market rate.
UniCredit said in a statement that it was aware of the matter and that the prosecutors’ response was “in line with protocol when such complaints are filed.”
In Tuesday’s trading, Commerzbank shares slipped below the price implied by UniCredit’s buyout offer, after trading consistently above that level since the bid was launched and rendering Italian bank’s offer relatively unattractive.
Shares in Commerzbank were trading at 36.53 euros by 0812 GMT, while those of UniCredit were at 76.97 euros. With an exchange ratio of 0.485 new UniCredit shares for each Commerzbank share tendered, the Italian bank’s bid values Commerzbank at 37.33 euros a share.
The offer ends on Tuesday but will extend for a further 15 days from June 20.
If the offer succeeds and is approved by the European Central Bank (ECB), it should mainly allow UniCredit to gradually increase its stake in Commerzbank and merge it with its German subsidiary HypoVereinsbank.
In particular, the Milan-based bank is proposing to cut back Commerzbank’s international network, deemed too complex and inefficient, and refocus the bank on its activities in Germany.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in May the bid was destroying “trust” in Germany’s second-largest private bank.
Seeking to fend off the advances, Commerzbank’s CEO Bettina Orlopp unveiled a strategic plan to strengthen profitability through 2030, including job cuts to become leaner and more attractive to shareholders.
UniCredit has meanwhile asserted that by surpassing the 30% threshold of voting rights, it should be allowed to appoint all of the shareholder representatives to the supervisory board, where two representatives of the German state currently sit.
Orlopp has contested that position, pointing to an agreement with Berlin that guarantees Commerzbank the power to propose the state’s representatives to the board.
Maintaining a low-key profile does not really relate to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Yet that is the strategy the American president says he now favors in the war against Iran, and he is betting on economic pressure over diplomacy or new strikes.
“We are low-keying it,” Trump told Axios by phone on Sunday.
“We’re only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
The billionaire has since repeated that he is keeping the option of striking Tehran on the table, but prefers to stress the economic damage inflicted on the country through economic sanctions.
“Iran is broke, totally broke and they’re not paying their soldiers,” Trump said Monday in the Oval Office.
He has repeatedly claimed, most recently in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, that the country is experiencing inflation of over 300%.
He also claimed there is no urgency to act because the U.S. has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the oil trade that has become the geopolitical flashpoint of the conflict.
‘Terrible shape’
In reality, Tehran is locking down the strategic passage while Washington is imposing its own blockade on Iranian ports.
“Iran is in terrible shape economically. It can’t ship oil at any meaningful level. And it still labors under sanctions and still can’t access its overseas assets,” said Michael O’Hanlon, an expert from the Brookings Institution think tank.
“The question is, do its leaders really care? I think they care some, but not a lot.”
The mercurial American president has, for the moment, muted both his threats of apocalyptic strikes and promises of imminent diplomatic breakthroughs – messages that have been in constant rotation since he launched the war with Israel more than five months ago.
At the end of July, Washington announced new measures targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the Iranian military.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that Trump’s advisors have shown him data on the impact of American sanctions, which he is now reportedly considering tightening while he also mulls imposing new strictures.
That could be a tactical shift for an American president who, until recently, was threatening to unleash the most devastating strikes since World War II against Iran.
Chess match
The shift may also indicate the limited military options left available to the U.S., where the press has reported that American munitions stockpiles have been heavily depleted.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei called the fresh push for sanctions a “retreat,” noting the country has withstood U.S. sanctions for decades.
“Whenever Washington proves itself incapable of pursuing diplomacy, it retreats into sanctions; and whenever those sanctions fail to produce results, it simply increases the dose,” Baqaei said in an X post this week.
“The real risk is that American politicians, clinging to this habit, will instead strangle their own remaining chances of a less humiliating exit from a crisis of their own making.”
What remains to be seen is whether notoriously impatient Trump, who prefers the spectacle of combat sports like MMA and flashy “deals,” will be able to stay true to the long-term strategy of economic pressure.
In his interview with Axios, Trump compared the conflict with Iran to a game of chess.
“Iranians have shown they are professional chess players,” Baqaei told reporters in response to the comment.
Türkiye will scrap a special consumption tax (ÖTV) on diesel until the end of this month, according to a presidential decree published in the country’s Official Gazette on Thursday.
According to the decree, on Sept. 1 the diesel tax will be reinstated, rising incrementally by TL 3 ($0.0628) each month until it reaches TL 13.9006 per liter on Jan. 1, the same level as before the removal.
The price was set at TL 6 per liter between Oct. 1-31, and TL 9 per liter between Nov. 1-30.
The price will be TL 12 per liter during the last month of the year and will rise again to TL 13.9006 per liter after Jan. 1, 2027, according to the decree.
The decree also removes diesel from Türkiye’s sliding-scale tax adjustment system, implemented to limit the impact of rising oil prices following the outbreak of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war.
However, the decree said gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) will remain in the sliding-scale system until Oct. 1, when the system is set to be abolished.
Global energy prices have been fluctuating heavily in the past couple of weeks amid concerns that U.S.-Iran talks for ending the conflict have stalled.
Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, reported Wednesday a record profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns ($184.3 billion) for the first half of the year, supported by strong performance in technology shares.
Investing the Norwegian state’s revenues from oil and gas production, the fund owns on average 1.5% of all listed companies globally, making it the world’s largest single investor.
“The result is driven by good returns in the equity market, particularly from Asian technology stocks,” CEO Nicolai Tangen said in a statement accompanying the half-year results.
The fund’s first-half return beat a previous record of 1.5 trillion crowns set in the first six months of 2023, and corresponded roughly in size to the full-year nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of a nation such as Uzbekistan, a country of around 39 million people, a Reuters comparison showed.
Concentration of chips
Still, the fund’s management has repeatedly warned that future wars and economic depression could wipe out much of its holdings.
Tangen on Wednesday said the top 10 companies in its portfolio now represent 20% of the fund’s value, with most of those firms in the tech industry, raising the concentration risk associated with its index-based investment strategy.
“It’s chips, chips, chips, chips, chips … we’ve never seen such concentration before,” Tangen said.
Any change to this strategy would have to come from Norway’s parliament, a process that normally takes years. The fund late on Tuesday announced for the first time that it held a 0.05% stake in Elon Musk’s SpaceX worth $1.22 billion as of June 30, in an updated list of its holdings.
That stake was modest when compared with its other tech holdings.
It held a 1.28% stake worth $62 billion in Nvidia, a 1.24% stake worth $52 billion in Apple, a 1.17% stake worth $50 billion in Alphabet, a 1.27% stake worth $35 billion in Microsoft and a 1.7% stake worth $34 billion in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, fund data showed.
Overall, the fund is invested in around 7,100 companies globally. It also invests in bonds, property and renewable projects.
SpaceX shares rallied sharply in the wake of its record-breaking IPO in late June, then pulled back sharply as investors questioned whether a lofty valuation of 77 times expected revenue could be justified.
Turkish Airlines (THY) completed the longest nonstop flight in its history on Tuesday, flying Italian football giants Juventus directly from Australia’s Perth to Turin in a 16-hour, 27-minute charter operation.
The airline’s Boeing 777-300ER covered approximately 13,800 kilometers (8,575 miles) on the direct flight, according to flight tracking platform Flightradar24.
The special charter was arranged after Juventus concluded its pre-season tour of Australia, including the “Derby d’Italia” exhibition match against Inter Milan.
Before transporting the team, the aircraft operated a positioning flight from Istanbul to Perth under flight number TK3700, a journey lasting approximately 14 hours and 30 minutes.
Executives recently said THY plans to expand its nonstop long-haul network by deploying ultra-long-range aircraft from late 2027, enabling direct flights to destinations in Australia and South America.
The carrier says it serves more countries than any other airline through its scheduled network.
Under its 2033 strategy, Turkish Airlines plans a major fleet replacement and expansion to around 800 aircraft. It has orders in place for nearly 420 aircraft, including Airbus and Boeing jets, with negotiations continuing for an additional 100 Boeing planes.
Türkiye will launch its first offshore wind tender in the first quarter of 2027, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said Wednesday.
The government sees offshore wind among Türkiye’s most strategic renewable energy priorities. It aims to install 5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power capacity by 2035.
The country has already designated four areas as installation sites, including the Saros Gulf, areas near the islands of Gökçeada, Bozcaada and the region off the coast of Edremit.
A draft tender specification for the offshore Renewable Energy Resource Zone (YEKA) auction has been published in the announcements section of the Energy Ministry’s website.
Industry representatives, investors and relevant organizations can submit their views on the draft specification until Aug. 17. A final tender specification will be prepared based on the feedback received.
Bayraktar said Türkiye would send a message to the world on its offshore wind ambitions ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP31), which will be held in Antalya in November.
He noted that Türkiye would announce details of its first offshore wind YEKA ahead of COP31.
“We will announce the tender in September and hold the offshore YEKA auction in the first quarter of 2027,” Bayraktar stated.
“This tender will be a first for our energy sector. Our target is to reach 5,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind capacity by 2035,” he said.
“We do not see offshore wind merely as a new energy source. We also see it as an area that will make a balanced contribution to our country’s security of supply, support our domestic industry and increase qualified employment,” Bayraktar added.
Türkiye has, in recent years, intensified efforts to identify offshore wind energy zones, particularly in the northwestern part of the country.
Compared with onshore plants, offshore wind farms involve higher investment and maintenance costs, but they can generate electricity with fewer interruptions.
The YEKA scheme was introduced in 2016 to facilitate land allocation for investors, ease the deployment of large projects and encourage the domestic production of renewable energy technologies.
The government later unveiled updates to the model to draw greater investor interest. Key enhancements included simplifying post-tender permitting procedures and introducing financial incentives like exemptions from transmission fees.
Türkiye has so far held YEKA auctions totaling 7,800 MW and allocated an additional 3,800 MW of capacity in 2024 and 2025 under the updated auction model.
The country’s total installed capacity now exceeds 125,000 MW, and over 60% of this consists of renewable sources. Wind power capacity stands at more than 15,000 MW, while solar capacity has reached over 26,000 MW.
It plans to organize at least 2,000 MW of YEKA competitions every year, as it aims to raise combined wind and solar installed capacity to 120,000 megawatts by 2035.
The business community hailed a new law establishing the legal framework for the government’s terror-free Türkiye initiative, saying it would lift investor confidence, spur regional development and brighten the country’s long-term economic outlook.
Lawmakers on Monday voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation, titled the Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integration, aimed at advancing a peace effort and the dissolution of the PKK terrorist group,
The law would end one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies, which has killed tens of thousands of people in Türkiye, fueled social division, and, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, cost more than $2 trillion (TL 95.51 trillion).
The business world described the legislation as “historic” and an important “milestone” for Türkiye’s economic future, saying economies grow faster in an environment of trust and stability.
‘Peace means more investment’
Mustafa Gültepe, chair of the Türkiye Exporters Assembly (TIM), said a Türkiye free from terrorism and security risks, with stronger social cohesion, would become more predictable for investors, more stable for manufacturers and more competitive for exporters.
Gültepe added that the legislation would strengthen positive expectations across a broad range of areas, including Türkiye’s sovereign risk premium, investment climate, regional development and foreign trade.
He also said it would enable more efficient use of public resources by strengthening coordination and reducing waste, creating a more predictable and sustainable environment for both the public and private sectors.
“For exporters, peace means more investment, more production, more trade and more exports,” Gültepe said, adding that TIM was ready to capitalize on the opportunities created by the new period.
Redirecting of resources
Burhan Özdemir, head of the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (MÜSIAD), called the legislation “a historic decision” for Türkiye’s future and national unity.
He said dismantling the terrorist group marks the beginning of a “new era” that could accelerate economic development.
That could particularly go for eastern and southeastern Türkiye, a region that has long lagged behind economically due to persistent risks.
According to Özdemir, terrorism has cost Türkiye more than $2 trillion over the past four decades by slowing development and diverting resources away from productive investment.
“Now is the time to direct our resources not to defense but to development, production, employment and high technology,” he said.
Özdemir added their members would now work to increase investment, create employment opportunities for young people and strengthen production particularly in the east and southeast.
Strong guarantee for development
Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) Chairperson Nail Olpak said the legislation marked “a historic threshold,” adding that every step toward permanently eliminating terrorism was welcomed by the business community.
He said a more predictable and secure environment would reinforce Türkiye’s competitiveness by encouraging greater investment, production, employment and exports, while also enhancing the country’s appeal to international investors.
“A Türkiye where the shadow of terrorism has been lifted, and security has been strengthened, is the strongest guarantee not only for social peace but also for economic development,” Olpak said.
He noted that confidence, stability and predictability consistently rank among the most important factors cited by the international business community.
Olpak also said stronger domestic unity and lasting security would support regional development and improve Türkiye’s global competitiveness, adding that the business world was fully aware of the economic and social benefits that the terror-free Türkiye initiative could generate.
‘Historic’ opportunity
Anatolian Lions Businessmen Association (ASKON) Chair Orhan Aydın described the initiative as a “historic” opportunity for the country’s future while stressing the importance of preserving social cohesion throughout the process.
“A Türkiye free of terrorism means a safer, more peaceful country with a stronger investment environment,” Aydın said.
He suggested that a more secure environment would make Türkiye more prosperous, improve its international competitiveness and encourage both domestic and foreign investment.
“A factory chimney producing smoke symbolizes not only production but also peace,” Aydın said, adding that the new period would provide a significant boost to investment and manufacturing while making Türkiye a more reliable destination for international investors.
He said businesses around the world naturally gravitate toward safe and predictable markets, expressing confidence that Türkiye would be among the main beneficiaries of a lasting improvement in security and stability.
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