The Italian lender now owns around 20% of Commerzbank’s shares and is the largest shareholder of the bank it hopes to engineer a merger with.

UniCredit has no plans to heed the advice of the German government to drop its ambitions to take over Commerzbank , the Italian bank's CEO was quoted as saying on Friday.

A German finance ministry said on Wednesday that the government remains opposed to a possible takeover bid by UniCredit for Commerzbank , after the Italian bank took a bigger stake in its German ...

UniCredit eventually intends to control around 29% of Commerzbank voting rights by converting the remaining 9% in financial instruments it holds into physical shares, it added.