HONG KONG (Dow Jones) – ING Groep NV (ING) has received five bids for its Asian private banking assets and three bids for the Swiss assets it put up for sale, potentially raising a total of US$2 billion for the Dutch bank, people familiar with the situation said..

ING is selling the two entities separately, but "a couple of bidders" have bid for both, one person said.

DBS Group Holdings Ltd. and Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer Holding AG have submitted bids, they said, without giving details.

In Asia, ING's private banking operation covers the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, as well as China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Analysts said Singapore's DBS is likely to bid for just the Asian assets, while Julius Baer may want to strengthen its foothold both at home and abroad by bidding for both.

The names of the other bidders weren't immediately available, although one person said all bidding parties already have private banking businesses. The people familiar with the situation also said that bids came in between US$1.8 billion and US$2 billion for the two assets combined.

Thursday was the deadline for the final round of bids.

The number of bids for the private banking assets exceeded the expectations of many market watchers, especially as Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group (CS) and two other bidders that were short-listed dropped out of the race, the people said.

The sale of ING's offshore private banking assets, put up for sale earlier in the year, could help ING  pay down a EUR10 billion ($14.2 billion) lifeline it received from the Dutch government in October last year. One banker specializing in bank mergers, while not involved in this deal, said the valuation
of US$2 billion - translating to around 1.5 times book value - "seemed rich but reasonable" given that some of the assets were in high-growth Asia, which has also seen a rapid recovery in its equity markets.

Benefiting private banking clients, equity markets in Asia have staged a strong rebound since the second quarter, led largely by China's CNY4 trillion stimulus package. The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index, which tracks performance of the region's bourses, has risen over 25% since the beginning of the year. At the end of June, ING's Asian private banking operation had around US$16 billion of assets under management, while its Swiss operation had around US$15 billion of assets under management.