Deutsche Postbank sale decision will not drag on

It would be unwise to set a time frame for a decision over the sale of Deutsche Postbank, but it will not drag on for much longer, Deutsche Post’s Chief Executive told a German newspaper.

‘It would be a mistake to put ourselves under time pressure by setting ourselves a time frame,’ Frank Appel told the Bonn-based General-Anzeiger newspaper in an article to appear in its Saturday edition.

‘However, the decision will not drag on and on for much longer,’ he said, adding that he sympathised with employees who wanted to know what was going to happen with Postbank, Germany’s largest retail bank.

Appel said it is actually an attractive time for foreign banks to be looking at buying German banks, but the credit crisis had made financing such a deal more problematic.

Deutsche Post has been in talks for weeks with potential suitors for its majority stake in Postbank, but has not struck a deal so far. Appel repeated that Deutsche Post will not sell the stake unless the offer was good.

Sources familiar with the situation say Deutsche Bank is among interested parties along with Banco Santander and ING.

A key issue is the valuation of Postbank, whose market capitalisation has fallen to around 7.6 billion euros (USD 11.33 billion), below the sale price of above 10 billion euros that the sources said had been floated earlier this summer.

‘It’s true, lots of speculators have pulled out,’ Appel told the newspaper, referring to the drop in the Postbank share price.