Credit to China Development Bank for a diverting sideshow but, like most big takeovers involving German companies, this was always going to be an all-German affair. Allianz’s sale of Dresdner Bank to its Frankfurt neighbour, Commerzbank, has cued the usual effusive presentations from all parties involved. Yet neither side is doing brilliantly out of it.

The deal allows Allianz to retreat from banking while preserving the distribution agreement under which it sells insurance through Dresdner’s branches. It has also picked up Cominvest, Commerzbank’s so-so asset management business, inexpensively. But, in practical terms, it has swapped a 100 per cent stake in a risky bank for a 30 per cent stake in an even riskier bank, bearing in mind Commerzbank’s inferior loan portfolio and big property interests (in 2005 Dresdner got out of commercial real estate by selling its stake in Eurohypo to, erm, Commerzbank).