Today the Bundeskartellamt has cleared the merger between the savings banks Sparkasse Ingolstadt and Sparkasse Eichstätt.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: "Under the law of the federal state of Bavaria savings banks must have geographically defined business areas. Due to these legal provisions they cannot and in practice have not become active in the business areas of other savings banks. The merger could therefore be cleared as the conditions of competition will stay the same with or without it."

Under the savings banks law of Bavaria, the business areas of savings banks generally correspond to the areas governed by their owners, in most cases local authorities. For this reason savings banks are generally prohibited from opening branches and advertising outside their business areas. The investigations have revealed that there are in fact no relevant overlaps in the respective business areas of the parties.
The merger affects several markets in the banking services sector, both in the private and business customers segments. The Bundeskartellamt defines some of these markets as regional markets. This applies above all to the personal current accounts market, but also to credit markets for business customers.

The investigations have shown that in many markets within their own business areas, the local savings banks have high market shares, some of them even exceeding the threshold above which dominance is presumed. However, as there are no overlaps, there is no addition of market shares.

There are also other alternative providers of full-range banking services for customers in the Ingolstadt and Eichstätt regions, in particular, the local Volks- und Raiffeisen (cooperative) banks as well as banks that are active throughout the whole of Germany and banks that have no branches in the region concerned, e.g. direct banks.

Against this background the merger could be cleared without the initiation of second phase examination proceedings.

See also "Bundeskartellamt clears merger of savings banks in Lower Saxony" Press Release of 10 August 2016.