South Korea’s Tongyang Life Insurance is planning to bid for ING Groep life insurance business in the country, which has been valued at approximately $2.1bn.
Persons familiar with the matter were quoted by media sources as saying that the South Korean underwriter has expressed interest and that it was reviewing whether to purchase ING Life Korea in a regulatory filing.
After 10 months of extensive negotiations, the Netherlands based financial conglomerate could not ink an agreement with KB Financial Group owing to pricing difference in 2012.
During the financial crisis of 2008, ING received €10bn bailout and since then has offloaded its insurance operations in Asia including Malaysian, Thailand and Hong Kong units for $3.9bn, to repay creditors.
The Dutch firm is still looking for suitable buyers of operations in South Korea and Japan.
ING's Asian business is mostly concentrated in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand with South Korea and Japan account for about two thirds of the business.
