BNP Paribas has closed the acquisition of 81.4% stake in DAB Bank AG from Unicredit AG, together with the voluntary offer to minority shareholders. Following this step, BNP Paribas now controls 91.7% of DAB Bank’s capital and announces its intention to perform a squeeze-out on the remaining shares. Through this acquisition BNP Paribas strongly boosts its retail presence in Germany.
With DAB Bank and Consorsbank, BNP Paribas ranks fifth digital bank in Germany serving 1.4 million clients and first online broker with 8.7 million executed trades for the first nine months of the year. This acquisition also provides foundation for retail business in Austria, where the Group intends to develop direktanlage.at into a full-blown digital retail bank. Overall, at the end of September 2014, the total deposits of Consorsbank and DAB Bank reached 17Bn EUR and total assets under management 47Bn EUR.
“This operation once more confirms our strategic ambition to build a long term franchise in Germany, in line with our development plan in the Retail, the Corporate and the Institutional segments. DAB now joining our set-up in Germany represents a key contribution to grow our clients’ and deposits’ base serving the German economy. The combined client base puts us in a position to come close to the top 3 online banks in the country.” says Camille Fohl, Head of BNP Paribas Germany and Chairman of the Management Board in Germany.
Kai Friedrich, CEO of Consorsbank and coordinator of the BNP Paribas Retail activities in Germany, confirms: “the clients of DAB Bank and Consorsbank will both benefit from this operation. We intend to offer to all our retail clients a fully-fledged banking offer and services, while maintaining state of the art platforms for active traders. At the same time, we will speed up the development of the B2B activity for the professional segment”.
“We welcome the employees and clients of DAB Bank to the BNP Paribas Group. This acquisition is a crucial strategic move, both for our development in Germany and to further grow our digital bank in Europe. BNP Paribas, with already 1.3 million digital clients through Hello bank!, will become one of the leader in Europe in this field, adapting to changing needs and behavior of our clients” concludes François Villeroy de Galhau, COO of BNP Paribas and Head of Domestic Markets.
Founded in 1994, same year as Consorsbank, DAB Bank has been experiencing rapid growth in its direct banking business, in particular recently since 2012. The Munich-based company is expanding its business with private clients, as well as through its B2B offer to the professional segments such as Independent Financial Advisers. DAB Bank in Germany and direktanlage.at its subsidiary in Austria, serve 575,000 and 68,000 clients, respectively. Their total deposits reached 5bn EUR and securities accounts stood at 31bn EUR end of September 2014.
In Germany, BNP Paribas already covers a broad range of client segments from retail to corporate and institutional with 13 businesses lines and more than 4,000 employees. Germany is a key market for BNP Paribas’ expansion in Europe, committing additional means and workforce with strong growth targets in terms of revenues.