On May 6, 2022, a Deutsche Bank branch in the financial district of Frankfurt, Germany.
Alex Kraus | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Lawyers representing plaintiffs in long-running litigation Deutsche Bank on Friday blasted the German bank’s proposed settlement as a “belated lowball” offer.
Key to Deutsche Bank’s challenge is that it paid too little for German retail banking giant Postbank in the late 2000s.
Legal action over the multi-stage deal has been ongoing since 2010.
Jan Bayer, senior partner at law firm Bayer Krauss Hueber, told CNBC that Deutsche Bank offered claimants €36.50 ($40.12) per Postbank share on Thursday afternoon. Claimants have until Monday to respond.
The news came first report Reuters reported on Friday.
Hearing on Postal Bank case to be held The case was heard at the Cologne Higher Regional Court on Wednesday.
“This strategy (late rolling offers at low prices) has been planned for months, despite bank statements to the contrary and our warnings months ago that there was a risk that this strategy would not work,” Bayer said. told CNBC via email.
He added that the offer was subject to acceptance by all claimants, one of whom had already rejected the offer. That means the settlement is unlikely to go through unless circumstances change.
“The bank’s goal of avoiding a court ruling on Wednesday is doomed to fail, with any settlement appearing to be out of reach,” Bayer said, adding that the timing of the “…unannounced offer during the holidays” meant the law firm It will not even be certain that it will be able to contact all claimants by the deadline.
Bayer Klaus Huber represents about 50 mainly institutional claimants in various proceedings surrounding the case, Bayer said The amount claimed is approximately €1 billion.
A Deutsche Bank spokesperson told CNBC via email on Friday: “As we have stated in the past, we are in settlement discussions with the various plaintiff groups in the Postbank acquisition proceedings. We cannot comment further on the progress of these negotiations.”
The Postbank lawsuit has weighed on Germany’s largest bank’s recent performance. in its Second quarter results Deutsche Bank reported last month its first net loss attributable to shareholders in four years, mainly due to the bank setting aside 1.3 billion euros for the Postbank case. Deutsche Bank shares plummeted on the news at the time, but as of Friday, Deutsche Bank shares were up nearly 12% this year, according to London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) data.
in the previous one lengthy statement Regarding the case announced in April, Deutsche Bank said the plaintiff’s claim – that the bank was obliged to make a takeover bid at a higher price – had been “successfully dismissed”, adding that the bank considered the claim “invalid”.
The Cologne Higher Regional Court dismissed all claims in the lawsuit in 2020, but this ruling was rejected by the German Federal Court in 2022 and remanded back to the Higher Regional Court for a new judgment.
