UPDATE: ING Confirms It May Sell Car Leasing Unit

ING Groep NV (INGA.AE), the Dutch financial-services company that needed state aid to get through the financial crisis, Monday confirmed reports that it may sell its European car leasing unit in a move that will further reduce the scale of the financial giant.

ING, the Netherlands' biggest financial company by assets, said that it is reviewing strategic options for the business, which includes talks with "third parties interested in a potential acquisition." It will give more details in due course, it said in a statement.

Dutch daily Het Financieele Dagblad reported Monday that a transaction could total EUR4 billion, as a buyer would have to take over EUR3 billion in debt and bolster the unit's capital buffer by around EUR750 million.

ING wasn't immediately available to comment on these figures.

ING Car Lease is not on the list of assets that ING was ordered to sell by the European Commission as a condition for the EUR10 billion state aid it received during the financial crisis. However, the unit can be added to over EUR5.5 billion in assets ING has sold off under a restructuring program that aims to make the company less complex.

Meanwhile, the Amsterdam-based group is also in the midst of a restructuring ordered by the European Commission, in which it will divest its insurance business and some bank assets. The divestments will nearly halve ING's EUR1.3 trillion balance sheet and will transform the global financial giant into a European-focused bank that generates the bulk of its profit in Benelux countries.

ING last week kicked off the disposal program by announcing the sale of Internet bank ING Direct USA to Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) in a $9 billion deal. While the sale was welcomed by investors, analysts said ING didn't get the best possible price.

SNS Securities analyst Lemer Salah said he was "positively surprised" that ING now plans to sell ING Car Lease, which has a fleet of 240,000 cars and operates in eight European countries. He said the timing may be right as the car leasing market is gradually improving, after experiencing a slump in 2008 and 2009.

Potential bidders could be the car-leasing units of BMW AG (BMW.XE), Volkswagen AG (VOW.XE) and General Electric Co. (GE), Het Financieele Dagblad wrote. Other bidders may include Arval, a unit of BNP Paribas SA (BNP.FR), and Athlon Car Lease, which is owned by Dutch Rabobank Group.

At 1034 GMT, ING shares were 2.4% lower at EUR8.

-By Maarten van Tartwijk, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]