Do two 2nd XI banks together make the first team? It depends on the execution. Commerzbank shares on Monday fell 11 per cent on fears that Martin Blessing, the German bank’s chief executive, would fail to deliver sufficient savings to justify paying Allianz €9.8bn for Dresdner. He has so far underwhelmed, promising, for example, that there will be “no enforced redundancies until the end of 2011”. This is sensible. The combination has the potential to be a classic in-country merger led by cost savings but, in the run-up to next year’s elections, there is no benefit in scaring the horses.

Mr Blessing, who comes to the challenge of integrating Dresdner with the advantage of having worked there for a large part of his career, is looking for savings with an estimated present value of €5bn. These come primarily from the elimination of 9,000 full-time jobs from the 67,000-strong workforce by 2013, the closure of about one in five branches, the rationalisation of back-offices and the mothballing of Dresdner’s Frankfurt headquarters. Others have done more. Fortis, for example, is eliminating 29 per cent of a branch network enlarged by its purchase of ABN Amro’s Benelux business. Royal Bank of Scotland laid off 13,000 people within a year of taking over NatWest.