S&P places ING property funds ‘on hold’
Ratings house Standard & Poor’s (S&P)has placed the Advance and ING Wholesale Global Property Funds 'on hold' following yesterday’s announcement that they were the subject of a sales transaction.
The ratings house said the ING Group announcement that it had agreed to sell the majority of its ING Real Estate Investment Management business to the CB Richard Ellis Group had prompted the ratings decision in circumstances where senior members of the CB Richard Ellis global real estate securities team would be joining the ING global real estate securities team.
S&P noted that the sale of the funds was consistent with ING’s objectives of reducing its exposure to real estate and its requirement to separate its banking/insurance and investment manager operations by the end of 2013.
Commenting on the move, S&P analyst Nathan Bode said the ING transaction represented a significant development that affected both funds.
“As such, we have placed our ratings of these funds 'on hold' pending further clarification of the situation,” he said.
He said S&P would be meeting with members of both investment teams over the next few weeks and intended to resolve the 'on hold' rating as soon as possible.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
Recommended for you
BlackRock has announced its plan to acquire real estate investment firm ElmTree Funds which will be integrated into its new private financing solutions business.
With share price growth of 45 per cent for FY25, Australian Ethical has shared why it believes the firm has done so well compared to its active peers.
ETF investors would be wise to consider global or European exposure for their equity ETF allocations, according to AXA IM, with US government action expected to hit both its equity and bond performance.
A specialist ETF provider is seeking to become “the new Betashares” with its active ETFs, thanks to its use of algorithms to achieve outperformance.
