Dutch financial services firm ING Group announced on Friday that would it be exiting from a series of US mortgage-backed securities. ING's Alt-A mortgage securities portfolio were originally valued at EUR24 billion or USD33 billion. ING said that it would be unwinding its assets for the Dutch government for EUR400 million profit.

ING chief executive Ralph Hamers said about its plan, "While we are grateful for the support the Dutch State extended to us in 2009, we are pleased that today we can announce the end of the Alt-A arrangement. "Over the past years, we have worked hard to make ING stronger and simpler and to limit risks. We are looking ahead to take ING through the last phase of our restructuring and work on further focusing our company on serving our customers."

The announcement came days after it also announced plans to pay the Dutch government an additional EUR1.13 billion in state aid repayment. INC received a total of EUR10 billion in state aid and EUR2.8 billion in premiums and interest in 2008. The financial services firm had already paid back EUR8.5 billion of the principal state aid amount. ING expected to repay the Dutch government in 2015.