ING Posts Surge In Q4 Profit, Declares Dividend

Dutch bank ING Groep NV ING reported a strong gain in its net profit for the fourth quarter. ING reinstated dividend payments on ordinary shares and announced its plans to pay a cash dividend of EUR0.12 per share. ING posted a quarterly net profit of EUR1.18 billion, versus a year-ago profit of EUR626 million. Its underlying pretax profit dropped 13% to EUR783 million. Provisions against bad loans declined 29% to EUR400 million. Ralph Hamers, CEO of ING Group said, "ING Bank posted a strong set of full-year 2014 results, despite some headwinds in the fourth quarter. Interest results were robust, risk costs approached normalised levels and our continued vigilance on costs was evident as we invested for the further digitalisation of our banking services in the Netherlands and extended our ongoing transformation programme within Commercial Banking. Our fourth-quarter result was dampened by redundancy provisions related to these actions, the annual Dutch bank tax and negative CVA/ DVA impacts which lowered the underlying result before tax to EUR 783 million. Excluding those items, the underlying result before tax was a strong EUR 1,376 million. ING Bank's underlying net profit for the full-year 2014 was EUR 3,424 million, up 8.5% from 2013." ING shares rose 2.01% to close at $12.71 yesterday.