Commerzbank is far from fixed

Much better than expected third quarter results at Commerzbank don’t change the harsh truth: Germany’s second biggest bank is going nowhere. Chief executive Martin Zielke’s new three-year strategy falls well short of what is necessary to revive it.

There are spots of brightness in what Zielke wants to do ‒ like integrating digital bank Comdirect, which could avoid cannibalization and bring together the group’s digital investment. But, overall, the plan is more like an admission of weakness than a recovery strategy, mainly involving paying for redundancy settlements with the sale of one of its best assets (mBank, in Poland).