Share transactions
It was foreseen that during 2007 significant excess capital would continue to build without further intervention. Therefore it was decided to proceed with a EUR 5 billion share buy-back to be spread out over a full year from June 2007 onwards. By the end of 2007, 90.7 million shares had been repurchased for a total consideration of EUR 2.8 billion. The full impact of the share buy- back, once it has fully run its course, will be to improve EPS by approximately 7%.
Also, after the repurchase of ING preference shares from Aegon during 2006, the ING preference shares of both Fortis and ABN AMRO were repurchased during 2007. With these transactions, all three major holders have now sold their ING preference shares back to ING Group.
Capital Management also routinely adjusted the delta hedge for employee options throughout the year. At the start of 2007 ING Group held 52.7 million shares as a hedge against employee options. At the end of 2007 this amount was 36.0 million. As a result of buy-backs, warrants and delta hedging transactions the number of shares outstanding in the market decreased by 52 million to 2,099 million.
At the end of 2006, 17.2 million warrants B were outstanding. These warrants entitle the holder to purchase two ordinary ING Group shares at a price of EUR 24.96 each. During 2007, 7.9 million of these warrants were exercised, leading to the issue of 15.8 million new shares. During the early days of January 2008 the last of the warrants were exercised, leading to further issuance of more than 18 million shares. No warrants were outstanding after 8 January 2008.