European insurers may bid for ING Asia unit

European insurers may bid for ING Asia unit

"There is interest in ING's Asia Pacific assets and I could imagine some unsolicited bids," said a senior London banker who covers the financial services industry.Analysts say the AIG sale supports the valuation of ING's businesses and that ING will be able to exit insurance at book value of around 16 billion euros ($21.73 billion) or more before the end of 2013, by when it must sell the business.UBS research analysts put proceeds of a divestment of the Asian business at 5.6 billion euros."ING's Asian business is not the likes of AIA, but it is good. I thought we could see some unsolicited bids even before the Prudential deal was announced," said a second investment banker who asked not to be named.The purchase, orchestrated by Prudential's charismatic CEO Wholesale NFL Jerseys Tidjane Thiam, would be the biggest acquisition by a European company since Roche's $47 billion offer for Genentech in July 2008, according to Thomson Reuters data.ING, splitting off its global insurance operations as part of cheap jerseys a restructuring deal mandated by the European Union, has made clear since late October that it preferred an IPO rather than NFL Jerseys 2015 a trade sale for the insurance unit.Yet at the same time, ING has also made no secret of the intense trade interest in the business, with Chief Executive Jan Hommen famously saying he had to use "hands cheap nfl jerseys and feet" to count all the suitors who had called him."The route we're working on is an IPO . and while working on that we're keeping our eyes open for other options as they might come along," a spokesman for ING said on Friday.Any buyer would face challenges in taking on the business and its 6,500 employees, among them ongoing difficulties with the book in Japan.ING's Asian insurance unit booked a loss in the fourth quarter because of a 190 million euro charge in its Japanese business, which stemmed from changed assumptions about the surrender rate for variable annuities. ING has cheap jerseys decided wholesale jerseys to stop selling them in Japan.The NFL Jerseys China Asian unit also saw a sales decline of 22 percent in the fourth quarter, albeit with significant improvement in December.An appeal ING cheap nfl jerseys filed in January against the way the European Commission calculated its 2008 and 2009 state aid also clouds the eventual disposal.If ING wins, it would wholesale nfl jerseys avoid a deep restructuring. However, it is expected to sell the insurance business regardless of the outcome of the appeal. Thomson Reuters journalists Cheap NFL Jerseys are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

Cheap Jerseys