“意大利人来了”，一份通常较为冷静的德国日刊《法兰克福汇报》（FAZ）在六月的一则标题中尖叫道。这里提到的意大利人并不是来观光德国景点或寻找低工资工作的喧闹游客。相反，尽管FAZ称意大利的“经济声望较低”，但正是意大利的银行和企业正对德国这个巨大市场及其最优质的部分垂涎三尺。
“Die Italiener kommen”, screamed a headline in June in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a normally sober German daily. The Italians in question are not loud tourists coming for German sights or low-wage workers coming for German jobs. Rather, despite what the FAZ calls Italy’s “lower economic prestige”, it is Italian banks and businesses salivating over the giant German market and its choicest cuts.
10月15日，意大利资产和收入规模第二大的贷款机构UniCredit表示，它已获得欧洲央行（ECB）的批准，以完成对德国同业Commerzbank的450亿欧元（510亿美元）敌意收购。这笔银行交易可能是近期意德并购中的主菜。但它只是更大盛宴的一部分。
On October 15th UniCredit, Italy’s second-biggest lender by assets and revenue, said that it got the nod from the European Central Bank (ECB) to complete a €45bn ($51bn) hostile takeover of Commerzbank, its German opposite number. The banking deal may be the main course among recent Italo-German mergers. But it is part of a much larger feast.
今年早些时候，意大利高速铁路运营商Italo进入了德国市场。它计划到2028年在两条有利可图的路线上挑战国有巨头德国铁路（Deutsche Bahn）：慕尼黑-科隆-多特蒙德和慕尼黑-柏林-汉堡。一年前，由已故前总理西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼家族控制的MediaForEurope帝国以18亿欧元收购了德国第二大私营广播公司ProSiebenSat.1，并立即用意大利人马尔科·乔尔达尼取代了ProSieben的荷兰首席执行官伯特·哈贝茨。
Earlier this year Italo, an Italian high-speed railway operator, entered the German market. By 2028 it plans to challenge Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned giant, along two lucrative routes: Munich-Cologne-Dortmund and Munich-Berlin-Hamburg. A year ago MediaForEurope, the empire controlled by the family of Silvio Berlusconi, a late former prime minister, paid €1.8bn for ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second-biggest private broadcaster—and immediately replaced Bert Habets, ProSieben’s Dutch boss, with an Italian, Marco Giordani.
与此同时，较小的意大利公司正瞄准德国的中等规模企业（Mittelstand）。根据米兰投资银行Arkios的数据，去年它们的海外并购价值增长了74%，达到240亿欧元。德国是意大利最大的贸易伙伴，仅次于美国和英国，成为并购目标的国家。
Smaller Italian companies, meanwhile, are going after Germany’s Mittelstand. Last year they increased the value of their foreign takeovers by 74%, to €24bn, according to Arkios, a Milanese investment bank. Germany is Italy’s biggest trading partner and behind only America and Britain as a takeover target.
2025年，意大利制药公司Polifarma收购了来自法兰克福的竞争对手Hennig Arzneimittel；意大利科技初创企业收购商Bending Spoons接管了德国路线规划应用Komoot。（Bending Spoons刚刚将其自身的大部分股份出售给传奇美国投资公司伯克希尔哈撒韦。）12月，另外两家中型企业DIESSE和EsseEmme Tecno收购了破产的德国纺机制造商Mayer的部分资产，以获取其工业编织机技术。3月，意大利机械制造商Danese吞并了德国同行Zwaans。
In 2025 Polifarma, an Italian drugmaker, bought Hennig Arzneimittel, a competitor from Frankfurt, and Bending Spoons, an Italian collector of tech startups, took over Komoot, a German route-planning app. (Bending Spoons has just sold a big stake in itself to Berkshire Hathaway, a legendary American investment firm.) In December DIESSE and EsseEmme Tecno, two other medium-size firms, bought parts of Mayer, an insolvent German textile-machinery manufacturer, to get hold of its industrial braiding-machine technology. And in March an Italian maker of machinery, Danese, swallowed a German one, Zwaans.
意大利对德国企业的收购热情是历史趋势的逆转。过去，意大利拥有品牌，德国拥有资金。大众汽车于1998年收购了兰博基尼（跑车），并于2012年收购了杜卡迪（运动摩托车）；德国保险公司阿利安茨于2005年收购了意大利保险公司RAS；海德堡水泥（现为海德堡材料）于2016年吸收了意大利水泥。
The Italian appetite for German firms is the inverse of a historical trend. It used to be the Italians who had the brands and the Germans who had the money. Volkswagen bought Lamborghini (sports cars) in 1998 and Ducati (sports bikes) in 2012. Allianz, a German insurer, picked up RAS, an Italian one, in 2005. HeidelbergCement (now Heidelberg Materials) absorbed Italcementi in 2016.
此类交易并非完全成为过去式：去年，汉莎航空收购了意大利ITA航空41%的股份，并表示将在明年将其持股比例提高至90%。但由于德国国内生产总值自新冠肺炎疫情以来基本停滞，越来越多的德国公司——尤其是面临来自中国廉价替代品竞争的制造商——对外国收购持开放态度。至于意大利收购方，尽管其国内经济近年来可能增速快于德国，但远未达到“披萨烤箱般火热”的程度。正如米兰德意商会的Jörg Buck所说，欧洲最大的市场的一块蛋糕，再加上技术和工程技术的加持，因此看起来很诱人。
Such deals are not entirely a thing of the past: last year Lufthansa acquired a 41% stake in ITA Airways and says it will increase that to 90% next year. But as Germany’s GDP has more or less stagnated since the covid-19 pandemic, more German companies, especially manufacturers competing with cheap alternatives from China, are receptive to foreign advances. As for the Italian acquirers, their domestic economy may have grown faster than Germany’s in recent years, but it is hardly pizza-oven hot. A slice of Europe’s biggest market, garnished with technology and engineering know-how, therefore looks appetising, says Jörg Buck of the German-Italian chamber of commerce in Milan.
这并非人人皆宜。德国政府（持有商业银行13%的股份）对UniCredit雄心勃勃的首席执行官安德烈亚·奥塞尔试图立即解雇商业银行首席执行官贝蒂娜·奥尔洛普的意图感到反感。
This is not to everyone’s taste. The German government (which owns 13% of Commerzbank) is revulsed by the desire of UniCredit’s hard-charging boss, Andrea Orcel, to sack Bettina Orlopp, Commerzbank’s chief executive—pronto.
它还不喜欢奥塞尔在追求德国商业银行时所使用的手段。他借助衍生品工具建立了意大利联合信用银行的持股比例，这掩盖了他的意图。他在自己银行的持股比例即将达到30%之前，对其未持有的全部股份提出了吝啬的收购要约。这使他能够规避持股比例达到30%时必须发起全面收购要约的法律要求，同时也避免了此类要约通常应包含的合理溢价。之后，他便能够在公开市场上以低价继续收购德国商业银行的股份。
It also dislikes the tactics that Mr Orcel has used in his pursuit of Commerzbank. He built UniCredit’s stake with the help of derivatives, which obscured his intentions. He also made a stingy bid for all the shares he did not own just before his bank’s stake reached 30%. This allowed him to circumvent the legal requirement to launch a full takeover bid on reaching 30% ownership while sidestepping the need to offer a decent premium such a bid would normally include. He could then keep buying up Commerzbank shares on the cheap in the open market.
德国财政部希望修改收购法，以防止此类“低价收购”行为，即要求在收购方对目标公司的持股比例达到50%时，必须提出第二次强制性要约。届时，被迫提出全面收购要约的收购方将更难以通过吝啬的要约得逞。财政部还希望对收购方使用衍生品建立持股的行为制定更严格的规定。
The German finance ministry wants to change takeover law to prevent such “lowballing”, by requiring a second mandatory offer once an acquirer’s stake in a target firm reaches 50%. At that stage, an acquirer forced to make a full takeover bid would find it harder to get away with a stingy offer. The ministry also wants stricter rules on acquirers’ use of derivatives to build their stakes.
这看起来就像酸葡萄心理。即便提出的规则得以实施，也将为时已晚，无法阻止对德国商业银行的收购——尤其是在意大利联合信用银行已经获得欧洲央行批准的情况下。而且这些规则也不太可能阻止其他意大利企业。从南方看，德国股份公司（Deutschland AG）看来实在太诱人了。■
This looks like sour Riesling grapes. Even if the proposed rules were enacted, they would come too late to prevent the Commerzbank takeover—especially now that UniCredit has won the ECB’s blessing. And they are unlikely to keep other Italians away. From the south, Deutschland AG looks just too appetising. ■