MassMutual has announced an intention to purchase Baring Asset Management with approximately $32 billion in managed assets from ING Group. ING acquired the Barings Bank in 1995 after its reputation was blemished by a crook trader.

 

Baring Asset Management will remain an independent unit and function separately from Babson Capital Management and Oppenheimer Funds that are also part of MassMutual. The company’s chairman Robert J. O'Connell announced that the deal "dramatically expands our international institutional money management business in many countries, particularly in Europe, South America and Asia." Mass Mutual will be able to profit from Baring’s special expertise in global fixed income, emerging market debt and equity, Pacific rim equity, and European small-capitalization equity markets.

 

ING Group NV, the largest Dutch financial company, has declared that it plans to use the 1.5 billion proceeds from asset sales to enhance Internet banking and life insurance business in Asia. ING CEO Michel Tilmant intends to ``redeploy the capital in critical businesses,'' investing in acquisitions to spruce up the company's ING Direct telephone and Internet banking unit.