Deutsche Bank to flip Postbank?

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, bought up shares of Postbank, the bank with the largest number of local branches, in 2008-2012. Now, according to reports in two major media outlets, Spiegel Online and Manager Magazin, Deutsche Bank has begun evaluating a possible sale of Postbank.

Deutsche Bank pushed hard to gain ownership of Postbank between 2008, when it began making deals to acquire Postbank shares, and 2012, when it announced its parent, DB Finanz-Holding, had consolidated ownership over nearly 94 percent of Postbank shares.

A sale of Postbank would likely raise several billion euros. It's one way Deutsche Bank could raise fresh capital to offset billions of dollars in possible fines the bank may face in connection with allegations that it participated in interest rate manipulation and other scams, according to the reports.

Deutsche Bank said it was "irresponsible" to speculate on the possibility of "the sale of any part of the business, including Postbank."

Deutsche Bank has been engaged in a major internal process aimed at reworking its business strategy, under the rubric "2015+". The bank's head of strategy, Stefan Krause, has been tasked with leading a discussion involving managers at the highest levels of the bank. The discussion is meant to produce specific plans and proposals by the time of the bank's next Annual General Meeting on May 21, 2015, at the latest.

Privatization turned Postbank into another ball in play for the M&A game after 1995

Postbank was previously a unit of Deutsche Bundespost, the German national mail delivery service, which was in public ownership in right of the Federal Republic of Germany until it was privatized in 1995. Deutsche Bundespost was a successor to Germany's Reichspost, the national mail service, which was founded in 1871, in the same year as the Second German Reich, when the "Iron Chancellor", Otto Fürst von Bismarck, guided the nation's affairs.

The Reichspost, in turn, was a successor to the Norddeutsche Post.

The German government decided to make it possible for citizens to set up bank accounts at Reichspost outlets - which comprehensively covered much of the nation's territory - in 1876. From 1909, the Reichspost's banking services were re-organized into a distinct business unit called the Postbank. The Reich's dense network of post offices then doubled as an equally dense network of publicly owned bank branches.

The system served the nation admirably for decades, and Postbank remains the bank with the largest number of branches to this day. It has 1,100 main branches, several thousand franchise outlets, and 19 thousand employees.

Spiegel Online reported that the Spanish bank Santander and Germany's HypoVereinsbank were considered by Deutsche Bank's management to be among the possible buyers of Postbank, should they decide to sell it.

nz/hg (dpa, AFP)