Dutch financial services company, ING Groep NV, made a EUR 499 ($750 million) net profit during the third-quarter, helped by improving investment markets and a new focus on growth opportunities in its banking business.
ING Chief Executive, Jan Hommen, says that the bank wants to repay the remainder of the EUR 10 billion aid that it has received and focus on its growth strategy. Hommen commented that the bank plans to pay back EUR 5 billion before the end of the year and repay the rest “quite early”.
ING will use revenue from its planned sale of the bank’s insurance operations and other assets to repay its remaining EUR 5 billion of state at that it had received in October 2008. Hommen said, “We will not place new equity to do so, as we did for the repayment of the first part,” referring to a new EUR 7.5 billion rights issue that was announced on October 26th.
The bank’s third quarter profit totaled EUR 499 million, or about $750 million US. The profit equated to EUR 0.25 per share, in line with a preliminary estimate of EUR 500 million that was given on October 26th. This is up from a net loss of EUR 478 million a year earlier.
ING’s banking business made a profit of EUR 264 million, helped by strong interest income as a result of improving financial markets and lower costs. Its insurance arm made a net profit of EUR 514 million, which ING said was influenced by favorable markets.
ING has also said that it had cut its operating expenses by EUR 1 billion for the first time in 9 months and expects that it will hit its goal of shedding EUR 1.3 billion in cost by the end of the year. ING has reduced its stay by more than 10,000 employees this year, down to 109,000 total employees.
