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.
