Bloomberg News
FRANKFURT - Allianz AG's agreement to buy the remaining 80% of Dresdner Bank AG for $20 billion has triggered plans for nine transactions worth an additional $13 billion.
The Dresdner deal, announced over the weekend, "may be the start of a chain reaction of restructuring that will ultimately change the competitive landscape," said David Williams, an analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., in a recent note to investors.
The reinsurer Munich Re would become the biggest shareholder in HypoVereinsbank AG of Munich, Germany's second-largest bank, by acquiring Allianz's and Dresdner Bank's holdings. That transaction alone would be worth about $3.5 billion.
Munich Re also plans to take control of Germany's No. 2 insurer, Ergo Versicherungsgruppe AG of Dusseldorf, by making a public offer worth about $3.76 billion for the third that it does not already own.
In three related transactions, Allianz plans to buy Munich Re's 40% stake in its life insurance unit, Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG, and Munich Re would transfer its 45% stake in Bayerisch Versicherungsbank AG and Frankfurter Versicherungs-AG to Allianz.
Allianz and Munich Re would also reduce their cross-shareholdings next year, in moves worth an additional $3.76 billion.
Allianz has also said it wants to reduce $35 billion investment in German corporations after asset sales taxes are abolished next year. Plans to scrap the taxes have "set forces free that have been waiting to come to full force," said Allianz's chief executive, Henning Schulte-Noelle, at a briefing. "They will break up sclerotic structures of the German economy."
Buying Dresdner would make Allianz the manager of $880 billion - and a provider to about 23 million customers. German financial services companies are trying to expand in money management because of expectations that demand for private pensions and mutual funds will rise as a result of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's reforms of the state pension system. That plan may generate as much as $27.9 billion of new business through 2008, analysts said.
The Dresdner deal would also make Allianz Germany's biggest publicly traded company, with a market value, calculating from Friday's closing prices, of about $95.3 billion. Deutsche Telekom AG is the biggest, worth $70.8 billion on Friday; Allianz was worth $70.1 billion.
