ABN e SNS voglio restituire anticipatamente gli aiuti statali. ING no.
ING Keeps Guaranteed Debt as Peers Study Early Buyback
By Jurjen van de Pol and Maud van Gaal - Feb 10, 2011 3:10 PM GMT+0100 Thu Feb 10 14:10:10 GMT 2011
ING Groep NV has no plans to redeem about 10 billion euros ($14 billion) of state-guaranteed debt ahead of schedule, while ABN Amro Group NV and SNS Reaal NV are studying the Dutch government’s offer of early buybacks.
“We see no reason to make use of the possibility at this moment because the close-out fee makes it uninteresting” from an economic perspective, said Frans Middendorff, a spokesman at Amsterdam-based ING. “In general we don’t expect much appetite for this option.”
Banking units of Dutch firms such as ING, LeasePlan Corp NV and SNS Reaal NV sold more than 50 billion euros of
debt backed by the government. The guarantees, aimed to restore funding to banks during the financial crisis, were put in place in 2008 and still covers about 39 billion euros of debt.
Dutch Finance Minister
Jan Kees de Jager ended the
program in December after it hadn’t been used for more than a year because lenders returned to regular funding. The ministry offered banks the possibility to repurchase their state- guaranteed bonds until June 30 at a fee of 15 percent of the annual guarantee premium for the remaining maturity.
“Now we wait and see,” said Erik Wilders, who heads the Dutch State Treasury Agency which oversees the guarantees. “We hope that if banks want to apply, they’ll do so in the first half of the year.” The ministry will evaluate the buyback option after that and decide on a possible continuation.
‘Strange Decision’
ING, the largest Dutch financial-services company, borrowed 4.15 billion euros and $8.65 billion using the guarantees, the biggest amount after government-owned ABN Amro, which took up 18.8 billion euros, according to Finance Ministry
documents.
“I don’t think ING has a lot of trouble getting funding” in the market, Benoit Petrarque, an Amsterdam-based analyst at Kepler Capital Markets, said by phone today. “From this perspective it seems like a strange decision to start talking about economics when you received a big amount of state support.” Petrarque has a “reduce” rating on the stock.
ING is splitting its insurance and banking units under conditions for gaining European Commission approval for a government bailout, which included 10 billion euros of state aid and the transfer of 21.6 billion euros of U.S. mortgage assets. Chief Executive Officer Jan Hommen has said ING aims to complete repayment of the aid before the end of this year after returning 5 billion euros in December 2009.
Studying Early Buyback
ABN Amro and SNS, the Utrecht-based bank and insurer, are studying the government offer for early buyback, spokesmen for the firms said. NIBC Bank NV, which borrowed 4.44 billion euros and $3 billion under the program, is considering its options, said Diederik Heinink, a spokesman for the lender in The Hague.
Banks increasingly used covered bonds, which are backed by mortgages or other loans, to fulfill funding needs, according to a Dutch central bank
report published Feb. 8. Lenders last year issued 9 billion euros of covered bonds, compared with 5 billion euros in 2009.
“The Netherlands as a country is doing well, which is important when you want to put covered bonds on the market,” Petrarque said. “We are not living in Portugal or
Spain.”
Former Finance Minister Wouter Bos started the guarantee program for bank debt after the collapse of Fortis, a Belgian- Dutch financial-services company, in October 2008.