ING Swiss, Asian Sale Could Fetch Up To $2B
ING Groep has received five bids for its Asian private banking assets and three bids for the Swiss assets it put up for sale, potentially raising a total of US$2 billion for the Dutch bank, people familiar with the situation said Thursday.
ING is selling the two entities separately, but "a couple of bidders" have bid for both, one person said.
DBS Group Holdings and Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer Holding have submitted bids, they said, without giving details.
Analysts said Singapore's DBS is likely to bid for just the Asian assets, while Julius Baer may want to strengthen its foothold both at home and abroad by bidding for both.
The names of the other bidders weren't immediately available, although one person said all bidding parties already have private banking businesses. The people familiar with the situation also said that bids came in between US$1.8 billion and US$2 billion for the two assets combined.
Thursday is the deadline for the final round of bids.
The number of bids for the private banking assets exceeded the expectations of many market watchers, especially as Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group (CS) and two other bidders that were short-listed dropped out of the race, the people said. ING picked the short-list for the assets last week.
The sale of ING's offshore private banking assets could help ING pay down a EUR10 billion ($14.2 billion) lifeline it received from the Dutch government in October last year. One banker specializing in bank mergers, while not involved in this deal, said the valuation of US$2 billion - translating to around 1.5 times book value - "seemed rich but reasonable" given that some of the assets were in high-growth Asia, which has also seen a rapid recovery in its equity markets.
Benefiting private banking clients, equity markets in Asia have staged a strong rebound since the second quarter, led largely by China's CNY4 trillion stimulus package. The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index, which tracks performance of the region's bourses, has risen over 25% since the beginning of the year.
At the end of June, ING's Asian private banking operation had around US$16 billion of assets under management, while its Swiss operation had around US$15 billion of assets under management.
In Asia, ING's private banking operation covers the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
By Amy Or
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
reddit
StumbleUpon