HSBC Trinkaus
Sal.Oppenheimer
CerberusCommerzbank
DZ Bank
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HSBC Trinkaus Would Consider Buying IKB, Chief Schmitz Says
Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG, the German bank controlled by HSBC Holdings Plc, would consider buying IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG after it had to be bailed out because of the U.S. subprime mortgage market rout.
``IKB, reduced to its core of classical long-term corporate lending, is interesting,'' HSBC Trinkaus head Andreas Schmitz said in an interview in Frankfurt yesterday. Both lenders are based in Dusseldorf, offering ``certain synergies,'' he said.
IKB said on Sept. 3 it will post a loss of as much as 700 million euros ($957 million) in the current fiscal year and will curtail investments in international securities funded by commercial paper that drove it to a near-default. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said the government is open to selling the 38 percent stake it owns through KfW Group.
DZ Bank AG, Germany's largest cooperative lender, also would be interested in buying IKB to attract mid-sized corporate clients, Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Kirsch said at a banking conference in Frankfurt this week.
HSBC Trinkaus wants to expand and would consider acquisitions in institutional asset management and private banking in Germany, Schmitz said. He ruled out a takeover of WestLB AG, Germany's third-largest state-owned bank, whose trading business is being probed by regulators and prosecutors.
WestLB is ``a bank without clients and a duplication in investment banking wouldn't advance us,'' Schmitz said.
London-based HSBC, the U.K.'s biggest bank, controls 78.6 percent of HSBC Trinkaus. Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg owns 20.3 percent of the bank. LBBW, which is Germany's biggest state-owned bank, has said that it wants to acquire WestLB.
