Cross-border bank mergers in Europe

Keeping our legal sight on the obstacles or difficulties for cross-border mergers which we started looking at in the previous article in this series, we cannot overlook that the laws of every state retain their own peculiar characteristics, a few of which are deep rooted although little known beyond their borders, which may place boulders in the path that are hard or impossible to move round.

Las fusiones bancarias transfronterizas han vuelto a estar de actualidad en la Unión Europea, animadas por los propios supervisores. En este tercer y último artículo de la serie analizamos el régimen de autorizaciones, el carácter probablemente imparable del proceso y alguna posible sugerencia para avanzar hacia una fusión, aunque por etapas.

There has been much talk about cross-border bank mergers in Europe, but so far none have happened or appear to be imminent. A few years ago Garrigues recommended that banks watch out for them in the future. Now the European supervisors are calling for them to be carried out and even trying to make them easier. But for the time being the bank concentration process is still taking place within each member state. This is currently being seen in Italy, with the acquisition of UBI Banca by Intesa Sanpaolo, and in Spain, with the merger of Caixabank and Bankia. It is not happening across borders. In this series of three articles we will try to identify and reflect on a number of legal factors that may partly explain this situation.