Dutch bank ING profits down by a fifth

Dutch banking giant ING said Wednesday its second quarter net profit slumped 22.3 percent year-on-year to 1.17 billion euros ($1.45 billion) as it stepped up efforts to reduce risks associated with its investment portfolio. The results for the three months to June were slightly below analyst forecasts for 1.23 billion euros as polled by Dow Jones Newswires. "As the eurozone crisis deteriorated, we accelerated our efforts to de-risk the investment portfolio at the bank and brought down our Spanish exposure," executive director Jan Hommen said in a statement. ING said it took a loss of 178 million euros on the sale of risk assets, mainly its holdings of Spanish government bonds. He also said the sale of ING's insurance activities to pay back billions of euros owed to the Dutch government was "on track." The banking group accepted a 10-billion-euro ($14.2 billion) cash injection in October 2008 as global financial markets reeled from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.