ING ‘emerges as top bidder for HSBC’s Turkish unit’

ISTANBUL / LONDON - Reuters

REUTERS photo

Dutch lender ING Group has emerged as the leading bidder for HSBC’s Turkish business, a person familiar with the matter said on July 2.

Three people familiar with the matter said HSBC had narrowed down the field to one suitor, and one of the sources said that it was ING.

ING, which already has a presence in Turkey, was one of three banks to submit a non-binding bid in May, sources had previously told Reuters. The other two banks were Bahrain’s Arab Banking Corp and France’s BNP Paribas.

HSBC said earlier that it would sell its businesses in Brazil and Turkey, where it is the sixth and the 12th biggest bank respectively, as part of a huge overhaul involving cutting almost 50,000 jobs. The businesses could fetch more than $4 billion for the pair.