Commerzbank CEO Says Europe Needs Banking Union Before Mergers

Commerzbank AG Chief Executive Officer Bettina Orlopp said Europe needs to make progress on creating a single market for banking services before it can have cross-border deals.

“You can’t create cross-border consolidation by consolidating institutions. You first need to have the environment for it, and the environment means that we need to finalize the banking union, which has not taken place so far,” Orlopp said Friday at an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance.

“One of the important topics is clearly still EDIS, so the EU deposit protection scheme, which we do not have, and that’s an ...