(Bloomberg) -- Germany is open to being home to foreign banks but needs to have its own strong banks as well, Finance Minster Olaf Scholz said Monday night in Munich.

"Just being a host country, as some European countries are, is not the best thing to strive for," Scholz said.

As an open, economically competitive country, Germany should welcome the opportunity to play host to "lots of" banks from all over the world, but it also has to have "strong" domestic banks that operate at home and abroad, he said.

The topic is especially relevant now as talks heat up about a merger between Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG. A plethora of Wall Street banks are working on that deal, underscoring their dominance in global investment banking at a time when German stakeholders are debating whether its two megabanks need to join forces to compete.

Scholz’s ministry privately pushed for the merger talks on the grounds that the country needs a national champion financial institution to help support the growth of Germany’s wide array of global companies.

Scholz declined to comment on the nature of the talks between the German megabanks.

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