ING Private banking aims to double in 3 years

By Reed Stevenson

GENEVA (Reuters) - The private banking business of Dutch financial services group ING Groep NV (ING.AS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is aiming to almost double its assets under management in three years, the deputy chief of the unit said on Wednesday.

That growth in assets, from 55 billion euros ($70 billion) in mid-2006 to 100 billion euros, will come from a growing class of wealthy individuals in Asia and also through acquisitions, ING Private Banking Deputy Global Executive Bernard Coucke told the Reuters' Wealth Management summit.

"Our ambition is to become a top-20 player," said ING's Coucke. "For me the floor of that is 100 billion euros."

Adding that ING Private Banking's goal was to reach that threshold in three years, Coucke also said that he wanted the business to make up a higher percentage of the ING's underlying pretax banking profit, at least double the current level of four percent.

That's in line with many other larger banks with private banking operations, but contrasts sharply with the two market leaders, Switzerland's UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), where private banking generates more than a third of profits.

"Part of that (100 billion euros) target is acquisitions," Coucke said. "The executive board has accepted the idea of an acquisition. But we will only do an acquisition in an intelligent way... silly prices we will never pay."

"We only will buy something that will bring us added value," Coucke said, but said that any acquisitions would only be limited to businesses smaller than ING Private Banking.

In the second quarter, ING Private Banking had an inflow of 800 million euros. It posted underlying pretax profit of 59 million euros, about 4 percent of total banking operations.  Continued...