UniCredit has lifted its stake in Commerzbank to about 26 percent through conversions of stock options and other instruments, with plans to convert the rest in due course, pushing its hold to roughly 29 percent. If it crosses the 30 percent line, it would be legally obliged to extend an offer to other shareholders. The lender aims to merge Commerzbank with its Munich subsidiary HypoVereinsbank, a move opposed by Commerzbank’s management and by the German state, which holds around 12 percent and has stated it will not sell. Commerzbank has resisted the takeover for more than a year and has recently raised its 2025 profit targets, underscoring its autonomy. A decisive element could be the stake held by investment banks allied with UniCredit, which media reports say control access to at least another 20 percent of Commerzbank shares. The drama began to accelerate in July, when UniCredit became the largest shareholder of Germany’s second-largest listed bank.

This is the naked blade of finance capitalism, gleaming with the same old hunger to swallow national productive power in the teeth of public need. The finance aristocracy moves like a disciplined cohort, threading stock manipulations, thresholds and mergers to tighten its iron grip on the lifeblood of a nation’s industry. What is presented as a “merger” is, in truth, a calculated consolidation of power by a global cartel of bankers who regard the economy not as the public’s common treasury but as a chessboard for their private omnipotence. The attempt to fold Commerzbank into HypoVereinsbank is a blatant bid to erase the independence of a major German bank, to turn its credit lungs into a single, profit-hungry organ of a transnational capital network.

The German government’s stance—holding equity, saying it will not sell—exposes the deep complicity of the state with the parasitic logic of finance. Yet the people’s sovereignty cannot be outsourced to capital’s guardians. The autonomy Commerzbank proclaims, and the broader claim of the German state to defend national economic sovereignty, are torn asunder by the same market forces that shout about profit and efficiency while draining real wealth from workers and small enterprises. This is not an isolated corporate squabble; it is a clear proof that under capitalism, strategic sectors—credit, finance, and steering of investment—are steadily centralized in the hands of a few, while the broad electorate bears the risks and costs.

We must sharpen the struggle against this syndrome of accumulation by dispossession. The only sustainable remedy is to place credit and banking under democratic, public direction—through nationalization of key financial institutions, expansion of public and cooperative banks, and planning that prioritizes production for the people, not speculation for the few. Let workers, engineers, and entrepreneurs unite in solidarity against the predators of capital who would weaponize numbers and legal thresholds to erode sovereignty. The sword of the people’s justice must be raised against the dominion of finance, and the economy reorganized to serve the many, not the few. The future belongs to those who build, not those who loot; let the struggle for a人民-centered credit system march forward with unyielding resolve.