FRANKFURT (AFP) -- Dresdner Bank, a unit of German insurance giant Allianz, aims to play an active role in German and European banking consolidation, its chief executive said Tuesday in a newspaper interview.

""We are an attractive bank with a strong position in Germany,"" Herbert Walter told the daily Handelsblatt, noting in particular its retail network and record of loans to a broad range of businesses and industrial groups.
The fragmented German banking sector was set for consolidation, Walter said, adding that there has been ""pressure to act for a long time.""
He also said that consolidation on a domestic level would have to include expansion throughout Europe to catch up with peers outside the German market.
""We have a problem in the industry here in Germany that we need to solve,"" the Dresdner CEO acknowledged.
Commenting on the global financial market crisis, Walter estimated it would take a while before banks around the world regained the levels of profitability they had posted before turmoil erupted in mid-2007.
Over the weekend, Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann told a Swiss newspaper he believed the financial market crisis was nearly over, pointing to encouraging signs from the United States.
But U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, said Monday he thought the U.S. would continue to face fallout from the credit squeeze.
Dresdner was one of the German banks hit hard, and Allianz said in March that its investment banking division Dresdner Kleinwort would be split off from the rest of the bank to pave the way for potential mergers.