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Article: Good Start for ING Direct, But Can It Last?(online banking service of ING Group, company analysis)
- Article from:
- American Banker
- Article date:
- May 24, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 SourceMedia, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It seems like a flashback to the dot-com boom: A fledgling online bank quadrupled its assets last year, to $3.6 billion, and its chief executive officer says assets have more than doubled again this year, topping $8 billion.
But this is no replay of the Internet bubble, nor is ING Direct a typical fledgling.
"We've just completed our second month of profitability, two years ahead of plan. That's not bad for a start-up," Arkadi Kuhlmann, the CEO, said in an interview last week.
He rejects the characterization of the Wilmington, Del., federal savings bank as an Internet bank, even though the Web is its primary customer channel. "We classify ...