Citigroup Rejects Merger With Deutsche Bank

Citigroup chief executive Charles Prince ruled out the idea of merging with Deutsche Bank in a newspaper interview on Friday, arguing that such a move would be too costly and offer too few synergies. "A deal between two capital market players, which is what a tie-up with Deutsche Bank would be, would bring with it additional financial burdens," Prince told the Financial Times Deutschland in remarks reproduced in German. "If you combine two operations each with a market share of 5 percent, you don't get a market share of 10 percent, because customers re-allocate their business" to rivals, Prince argued. The comments were the first official remarks by the world's biggest financial services group since the failure of merger talks with Germany's biggest bank at the beginning of this year. Prince said a purchase of Deutsche Bank would be too expensive. An acquisition of an investment bank "must be at such an attractive price that it offsets the related loss in earnings", the Citigroup chief said. "I don't see such a transaction."