v.w. business hey steve so there's been rumors about a possible merger between these two banks for quite some time yet now it's confirmed that talks are going ahead what about the timing wise it happening now as you said this is been in the crystal ball for a while and it's even been attempted once before on sort of a preliminary basis so both sides have known that this was a likely this is a likelihood both weak banks why it's happening now is because look at the economy what's happening with the global economy and also here in europe in germany everyone expects it to go down it's already starting to slump you see in china you see a lot of global signs that things are really sort of receding and when the waters recede that makes everything harder for businesses the german government looks and it sees a lot of businesses that are going to of course need support during that time when it comes to financing and credit and if they don't have a strong bank out there if they have too weak banks who's really going to be able to shore up germany's high powered export economy when push comes to shove