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Policymakers have long said Europe's ailing banking sector needs
to consolidate, but regulatory and political obstacles have
hindered big deals over the past decade.
This year, however, has seen major domestic bank tie-ups in
Italy and Spain, with bankers saying regulators are now more
willing to wave deals through.
Deutsche's chief financial officer James von Moltke said the
bank supported the "appropriate or valid industrial logic" of
mergers among the region's larger banks.
"For Deutsche Bank, we've been very focused on executing on our
own strategy, and we think that strategy would prepare us to
engage in merger activity when the time comes and the right
opportunities arise," von Moltke said at a financial conference.
"So we are expecting this wave but we are also working hard to
prepare on our side," he said.
The statements come amid growing speculation about a potential
deal in Switzerland.
The board of UBS <UBSG.S>, which held brief tie-up talks with
Deutsche last year, gathered last week to discuss strategy.
Staff at the lender recently examined a potential merger with
Credit Suisse, whose executives also expect consolidation.
It was only last year that Deutsche called off merger talks with
domestic rival Commerzbank <CBKG.DE>. Von Moltke said domestic
mergers "frankly present some challenges".
Raimund Roeseler, who oversees banking supervision at Germany's
financial regulator BaFin, said mergers could be helpful, but
were not always the solution.
"Do we really believe that the problems of the German banking
market would be solved if we only had 700 or 500 banks instead
of 1,400? I don't think so," he said at a separate banking
conference.
(Reporting by Tom Sims and Patricia Uhlig; Additional reporting
by Rachel Armstrong; Editing by Michelle Adair and Mark Potter)
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