Eurogroup Chief Says EU Needs Larger Banks and X-Border Mergers

Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis says Europe needs larger banks and more cross-border banking mergers.

He made these comments to reporters Monday (May 4) when asked about UniCredit’s plans to acquire Commerzbank.

“We need European rather than national champions and yes, we need more banking consolidation in Europe, we need more cross-border M&As,” said Pierrakakis, whose comments were reported by Bloomberg News.

As that report notes, Italy-based UniCredit has been trying to take over Germany’s Commerzbank since 2024, with both the lender and German government rejecting the idea.

Although he did not comment on specific banks, Pierrakakis — who is Greece’s finance chief — said that the European Union (EU) could benefit from bigger players.

“If you compare the technological investments of European banks to American banks or Chinese banks you will understand why we need bigger banks in Europe to facilitate and sustain more technological investment,” he said prior to a gathering of his fellow euro-area finance chiefs. “We need bigger banks.”

Examples of the type of tech investments happening among banks in the U.S. include Wells Fargo’s announcement last year that it had expanded its Technology Banking team by 20%. Around the same time, Bank of America said it planned to spend $4 billion on new technology — including artificial intelligence (AI) — during 2025.

According to Bloomberg, the Brussels meeting included comments from the European Central Bank’s top banking supervisor. Claudia Buch said that “practical progress on integration of European banking markets has been limited over the past decade,” even as “we have made significant strides toward banking union.”

“The cross-border provision of services remains relatively low, and cross-border merger activity has been weak,” she added. “This is why the banking union should be regarded as a single European jurisdiction for the purpose of financial regulation.”

Meanwhile, a report earlier this year by the Financial Times found that cross-border mergers involving European Union banks had reached their highest level since 2008, as pricing share prices ended a dealmaking drought.

A series of multibillion-euro bank mergers helped to bring the total value of cross-border European banking deals to 17 billion euros (just under $20 billion) during 2025, up from 3.4 billion euros in 2024, the report said, citing data from Dealogic.

The report added that policymakers had for years lobbied for greater consolidation in the EU banking sector, saying that regulatory obstacles and political pressure have caused the sector to lose more ground to larger American competitors.