ING U.S. Inc. has filed to raise $100 million in an initial public offering that would create a publicly held financial services company with 7,100 U.S. employees, including about 700 in Minnesota.
The IPO comes as ING Groep N.V., one of Europe's largest financial companies, splits its global banking and insurance operations following a 2009 agreement with European regulators.
Amsterdam-based ING Groep is to focus on banking, and is required to sell or divest its insurance and investment management operations by 2013 as it works to repay a $10 billion euro capital infusion it got from the Dutch government in 2008.
"Filing the S-1 is a major milestone in ING U.S.'s separation process," ING U.S. spokesman Dana Ripley said in an interview. "We've been preparing for this for a while."
The Friday filing makes it clear that the company's management will remain the same but does not address employment levels. The company has cut some jobs cuts across the United States recently.
New York-based ING U.S. had assets under management and administration of $445.3 billion at the end of June, and about 13 million individual and institutional customers, according to the company's IPO registration filing Friday.
The IPO covers all of ING U.S.'s operations which include retirement, investment and insurance business lines. Its insurance business, which includes employee benefits, is based in Minneapolis.
Profits for the first half of 2012 plunged by more than half, to $331 million from $793 million for the same period last year.
ING Groep has been disposing parts of its far-flung operations. Earlier this year it sold online bank ING Direct USA to Capital One Financial Corp. for $9 billion. Last year it sold most of its Latin America business to Colombia's Grupo Sura. Bloomberg reported in September that Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial Inc. has been in discussions to buy most of ING Groep's asset management unit in Asia.
Jennifer Bjorhus 612-673-4683
