Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: UniCredit Did a Commerzbank Trade

UniCredit

Here are two equity derivatives trades that you might do if you wanted to be a big shareholder of a public company.

First, you might want to buy shares on swap. You might decide one day that you’d like to own 11.5% of some public company. But you can’t just go out and buy 11.5% of the company, for some regulatory reason. In the US, for instance, you might need to get antitrust approvals, or you might want to avoid filing a Schedule 13D disclosing your position. Or in Europe, there are European Central Bank regulatory restrictions ...