AMSTERDAM: With his slicked-back hair and red suspenders, Michel Tilmant, chairman and chief executive of ING Group, is bit of a Gordon Gekko look-alike. But that is where the resemblance with the corporate raider played by Michael Douglas in the film “Wall Street” ends.

Rather than parroting much-quoted speeches by Gekko about how “greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” the 55-year old Belgian - whose dress sense evolved during a 14-year stint at Morgan Guaranty Trust - speaks about “the merits of the old-fashioned model” and the Dutch banks “access” to 75 million customers.

ING is exactly the sort of boring financial institution that was ignored in the recent boom years. Fifty-one percent of its profit comes from banking, 49 percent from insurance, with a strong position in the Benelux countries. It has consolidated net assets at \1.3 trillion, or $1.9 trillion - big enough to be a player, and to take excessive risks.

But boring has its advantages, especially today. ING is comfortable enough with its liquidity position, despite the current credit crunch, to continue with a \5 billion share buyback program that began in mid-2007. To date, almost 60 percent of the buyback, due to end in June, has been completed. A very significant 20 percent of the groups assets is in cash and other liquid instruments; for British banks, by contrast, the comparable figure is 2 percent.

In the third quarter ING wrote off only \61 million of its \30.1 billion subprime/alternative assets portfolio, compared with, say, Royal Bank of Scotland, a similar-sized bank, which wrote off 1.5 billion, or $2.9 billion, in the same period.

Tilmant believes that his banks relatively good performance comes down to a philosophy of risk management shared by staff with the right mind-set, allied to correct systems and procedures, plus a dose of common sense. He talks pointedly about avoiding “scientific garbage” in assessing risk.

But in a report published in December, a Merrill Lynch analyst, Zenon Voyiatzis, downgraded ING shares to neutral. The bank “continues to offer several attractions for long-term investors,” Voyiatzis wrote, but a marked deterioration in market conditions in the fourth quarter means the bank could face further subprime-related write-downs of up to \1.5 billion. It could also suffer from a gradual rise in bad debts in its wholesale lending operations and from volatile equity markets.

There is little doubt that financial services companies will suffer this year from a host of factors. But ING has a few advantages. The group, which in the nine months to Spet. 30 posted a 21 percent rise in net profit to \6.8 billion, owns insurance and banking businesses in more than 50 countries ranging from Mexico to South Korea.

It is making a major push to expand in emerging markets, which have been relatively immune from the crisis so far. In insurance, 49 percent of new sales come from developing markets, for instance. In banking, ING bought Turkeys Oyak Bank last year as well as a 30 percent stake in Thailands TMB Bank. It also is present in China with a 19.9 percent stake in Bank of Beijing, as well as in other markets via its stand-alone Internet bank, ING Direct

One cloud on the horizon is the strengthening of INGs main local rival. Fortis, headquartered in Brussels, is getting bigger and opening more branches, part of incorporating its portion of the Dutch bank ABN AMRO.

Tilmant professes to be unworried. “They are pretty busy and it provides us with some opportunities to concentrate on our clients,” he said.

A graduate of Louvain University in Belgium, Tilmant keeps longstanding ties to his country of birth by having dinner regularly with friends from his student days - a “healthy” use of his busy time, he says, presumably because it also keeps his feet on the ground.

Married and the father of two, Tilmant does make one concession to life in the fast lane: a personal fascination with cars. He owns three vintage 1950s Mercedes, and the bank sponsors the Formula 1 Renault team. He thinks the sponsorship is great publicity.

He is probably right. This year, ING sent a remote control to 400 chief executives and chief financial officers the bank hoped to do business with, along with a letter explaining that if they wanted the ING-branded Formula 1 toy racing car that went with it, all they needed to do was give ING executives one and a half hours of their time to explain the banks services. Three hundred took up the offer.

Karina Robinson is senior editor of The Banker. This article is adapted from her column, which will be published in the February issue.

In marathon speeches peppered with quotes from Marx and accolades to Che Guevara, President Hugo Chбvez repeatedly vows to do away with capitalism in Venezuela. But it turns out that Chбvezs economic policies have been generating a boom for those most capitalist of institutions - the banks in Venezuela.

Record public spending, fueled by high oil prices, is flooding this flourishing economy with excess cash. But government currency controls are trapping that money in the country. So the banks are using it for loans, as advertised on flashy billboards across Caracas.

And with interest rates lower than the inflation rate, “You would be stupid not to take out a loan right now,” said Richard Francis, a director of sovereign ratings for Standard Poors.

As a result, profits for the banking sector grew 33 percent last year, led by a jump of more than 100 percent in credit card loans and a 143 percent increase in automobile credit, according to Softline Consulting, a financial analysis firm based here. The banking and insurance sectors contribution to gross domestic product - the measure of all goods and services produced in the country - rose 37 percent in 2006, the central bank said.

The market looked attractive enough two years ago that the Stanford Financial Group of Houston put political risk on the back burner to open a dozen branches here. Now remodeling its own office tower in the Caracas business district El Rosal, the bank saw its revenues grow fourfold and its credit portfolio nearly triple last year.

Still, the banks may be thriving too much for the governments liking. Chбvez warned last month that the state could take over the sector if it did not offer low-cost financing to domestic industries. Among the institutions that would be affected by such a move are Citigroup, which is based in the United States, and the Spanish banks Santander and BBVA, which control lucrative outlets here.

The private sector is well aware that Chбvez is not afraid of nationalizing. He made similar threats before the state bought out American companies stakes in the countrys largest private electric and telephone companies earlier this year. The government also took over operations of multibillion dollar oil projects in May.

Bankers do not dismiss an eventual bank takeover, but they do not expect such a move in the short or medium term. “The government needs private investment in banking,” said Dirбn Sarkissiбn, president of Stanfords commercial bank in Venezuela.”Ask them if they have the personnel to manage 50 financial institutions.”

Oscar Garcнa Mendoza, president of the locally owned bank Venezolano de Crйdito and one of the few bankers openly critical of the Chбvez government, said the threat could be sincere, but that “it would be a disaster that would affect millions of Venezuelans who trust the banking system for their savings.”

In the meantime, consumers have been taking advantage of the expansion in credit. Betzaida Guerra, for example, said she discovered in a newspaper advertisement last year that a bank could finance the operation she had long wanted but could not afford. Within weeks, she secured credit for the nearly $5,000 surgery to enlarge her breasts with silicone.

“I was excited,” said Guerra, an accountant from a Caracas suburb, who has nearly finished paying off her 12-month loan. “I saw the advertisement and thought, The way out has arrived. ”

The consumer spree driving credit growth is apparent in upper-middle class Caracas neighborhoods like Altamira, where Gabriel Jimйnez was getting ready to drive his new black Mercedes Benz C200 sedan off the lot. Jimйnez bought the same model without financing in 2000, but this time he chose a 48-month loan to pay off most of the $65,000 car at 19 percent interest. The Venezuelan-owned bank Banesco approved his loan in only 72 hours.

“The process is really easy,” said Jimйnez, a divorce lawyer, before hopping onto a drivers seat still covered with plastic, smelling the new cars scent and playing with its gadgets. “Before, interest rates were so high that it wasnt worth it.” The Altamira Mercedes Benz dealership, which opened last year because of rising demand for luxury cars, has sold 9 of every 10 automobiles on credit this year since it began advertising the financing option in local newspapers, the director of operations, Vicente Amengual, said. Last year, only one of 10 was bought with a loan.

Government officials point to the booming banking sector as an indicator of a healthy economy, which grew more than 10 percent last year and nearly 9 percent in the first quarter of 2007. Even with the expansion of loans, credit levels are relatively low. Domestic credit was 17 percent of GDP last year compared with nearly 28 percent in Colombia, according to Standard and Poors.

(01-25) 08:07 PST WASHINGTON (AP) —

A major technology trade group is expanding lobbying efforts at the state level, boosting funding and staff to track legislation and other issues affecting the industry.

“At any given time, one state can introduce legislation that can impact the entire industry, for better or for worse,” Christopher Hansen, president and chief executive of AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, said in a statement.

In California, Florida, New York and 10 other states, the group already monitors Internet access fees, online commerce, privacy and other issues.

AeA said it will spend an extra $6.2 million to increase activity in some of those states, and to initiate activity in states where it is not already active. For example, it will also hire additional staff to work on “green” technology issues at all governmental levels.

The group represents about 2,500 companies, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Dell Inc., in the software, telecommunications, computers, semiconductor and other sectors. It announced the plans Thursday.

An AeA spokeswoman wasn’t immediately available for comment regarding the group’s current budget for its state lobbying program.