ING Real Estate Finance is the only unit of former ING RE that survived the crisis and maintained its independence. It is now rebuilding its lending portfolio, the company’s global head Annerie Vreugdenhil told PropertyEU in an interview.
Like most of its peers, ING REF was hit hard when the global financial crisis hit in 2008. What made ING different, however, to the rest was that it belonged to a real estate company – and not just any real estate company. At the time ING Real Estate was one of the biggest players in the world with a focus on development and investment management as well as finance.
After the parent bank received a bailout from the Dutch government, ING Real Estate was dismantled, the development arm wound down and the investment management unit ING REIM sold to CBRE Global Investors.
One of the advantages of the dismantling of ING Real Estate was that it enabled the financing unit to become integrated into the bank as a whole, says Vreugdenhil.
‘ING REF was a pretty separate unit at the time, it was based in The Hague, it was on its own, with its own company structure and CEO. When it was decided that we would continue with the real estate financing unit after the crisis, it was integrated into the wholesale bank.’
Access to capital markets
That decision has been key in the financier’s development post-crisis, she adds. ‘This gave us the opportunity to follow our clients in all the new directions they are taking. We can offer them access to the capital markets, bond issues, equity issues, unsecured loans and all the alternative lending instruments they would like to use to make their companies stronger and more robust.’
The integration of ING’s real estate financing unit into the wholesale bank has helped strengthen the platform for the changing demands of its clients, Vreugdenhil claims. ‘It was really a logical choice but it would never have happened otherwise or not as easily if it had remained a separate unit in The Hague. ING REF was doing something different that nobody really understood.
For the financing part of the business, you could say [the crisis] was a blessing in disguise. It has really made us stronger in areas where our clients were developing as well.’
ING REF is now rebuilding its lending book after seeing it fall to €23.4 bn in 2014 from €37 bn in 2008. The lending book has been growing again in the past two years and totalled €28 bn at the end of Q3 2016. ING REF has a global presence but its home market the Netherlands still accounts for more than half of the lending portfolio – or €14.2 bn as at end-June 2016.
The full interview with Annerie Vreugdenhil is published in the March issue of PropertyEU
