Australia’s fourth largest lender ANZ Banking Group Ltd has reiterated that it is not interested in selling ING to AMP Ltd, saying it’s focusing on organic growth.

ANZ chief executive Mike Smith said rumours the bank would sell ING to AMP in return for 30 per cent of the wealth manager were false.

Mr Smith said ANZ was focusing on growing its wealth management organically and was not considering any takeovers at the moment.

“That’s exactly what I’d call it - speculation,” Mr Smith told ABC television on Sunday.
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ING Investment Management (INGIM) is pleased to announce that ING Clarion Real Estate Securities (ING Clarion) - a specialist manager of equity real estate securities, has won the Property category of the 2009 S&P Fund Awards for the third year in a row.

ING Clarion is one of the largest and most experienced portfolio management teams in the world, with one of the longest track records managing global real estate securities. INGIM appointed US-based ING Clarion in 2005 to manage the investment strategy of the ING Global Property Securities Fund (ING GPS Fund).

The ING GPS Fund has maintained a solid performance track record, relative to its peers, throughout the global financial crisis and is also one of the few global property securities capabilities in the Australian market to have a five star rating from S&P in this asset class. Not surprisingly INGIM has continued to see inflows in excess of $600 million from Australian investors for its global property securities offering so far this year.
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The Dutch government announced yesterday that it will inject 10 billion euros ($A19.55 billion) into ING, one of the world’s 20 biggest banks.

In a evening press conference, the Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos expressed that while the government realises that enormity of the sums of money involved, they were essentially investing in a sound business to enable them to face the future with confidence.
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