ING Group Gets Bailed Out by the Netherlands
POSTED
ON BY Ken Tumin
ING Direct's parent, the Netherlands based company ING Group, is the latest major European bank to get bailed out by the state. On Sunday ING Group accepted a capital injection plan offered by the Dutch Government. Under the plan, the Netherlands will spend 10 billion euros for stake in the ING Group (see New York Times article).
I haven't been able to find out any news about how this might affect ING Direct. In addition to the US operation, ING Direct has operations in many nations including Canada, Australia, France Germany and the United Kingdom. The UK ING Direct made European headlines earlier this month when it took over responsibility for deposits of 160,000 UK customers with the failed Icelandic bank Kaupthing Edge.
ING Direct in the US has been a member of FDIC since 2000.
I haven't been able to find out any news about how this might affect ING Direct. In addition to the US operation, ING Direct has operations in many nations including Canada, Australia, France Germany and the United Kingdom. The UK ING Direct made European headlines earlier this month when it took over responsibility for deposits of 160,000 UK customers with the failed Icelandic bank Kaupthing Edge.
ING Direct in the US has been a member of FDIC since 2000.
If you read the articles, they took the cash to shore up their capital levels (which was already at the "well capitalized" levels).
Then why did ING take the cash to shore up their capital levels if it was not neccessary?
ING has been doing what Chase has been doing here..waiting for banks to fail and picking up the good pieces. They're not going to fail anytime soon.
If anything defines "rock", this bank probably is it.
GREED still RULES.
Banks that really don't need bailout money grapping as much money as they can at the taxpayers expense.
ING has to pay 8% interest on those preferred shares and ING can "pay off" the loan by buying those shares back at 150% of their original value. Seems like a win-win scenario for the Dutch, as they'll make a profit in almost any scenario.
ING is not going to fail. 10% of their balance sheet is now kept aside to absorb losses... There are very few (if any) US banks that can say that.
I just bought some fixed annuities from them and wonder how this move may affect this type of instrument? How I wish there were a website as efficient and useful for annuities, as Bank Deals is for CDs/savings... :o) Adela