SPIEKER & JAEGER advised on the merger, which marks the latest of a number of mergers by German savings banks (‘Sparkassen’). Westphalia-based Sparkasse HagenHerdecke and Sparkasse Lüdenscheid merge their business operations this year. The combined entity will be named Sparkasse an Volme und Ruhr. “One of the core problems of such a merger of savings banks is that the legal regulations of savings bank law on the one hand and antitrust law on the other hand are hardly coordinated,” said Dr Thomas Thiede LLM, partner at SPIEKER & JAEGER. “Banking law provides that only neighbouring savings banks can merge – antitrust law, however, evaluates the merger in directly neighbouring markets quite critically.” In light of the decrepit road connections between the two regions, SPIEKER & JAEGER’s Dr Achim Herbertz added: “The fiasco involving the run-down bridges may have had a positive effect after all. At present, it is hardly possible to get from Lüdenscheid to Hagen quickly and vice versa from Hagen to Lüdenscheid. The circumstance of the directly neighbouring markets may have had less of an effect this way.” Earlier this year, SPIEKER & JAEGER advised on the merger of the Dortmund and Schwerte savings banks, whose considerable market share in their respective cities merited close scrutiny by the German Federal Cartel Office (‘FCO’). It was found that the savings banks generally operated in the territory of their parent municipalities, meaning that the institutions involved were not quite genuine competitors. As a result, very few citizens of Schwerte were actually customers of the savings bank in Dortmund and vice versa. “There are no disadvantages to the detriment of consumers,” commented Dr Thomas Thiede. SPIEKER & JAEGER advised Sparkassen with a team comprising partners Dr Thomas Thiede, Dr Achim Herbertz and Kay U Koeppen. 104 LAWYERMONTHLY SEPTEMBER 2022 Sparkasse HagenHerdecke and Lüdenscheid’s Merger Dr Thomas Thiede Partner Dr Achim Herbertz Partner Kay U Koeppen Partner
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