ING Direct acquires ShareBuilder

Mergers and Acquisitions News- ING Direct / ShareBuilder

I received an e-mail from Dan Greenshields, president of ShareBuilder. Apparently, now was a good time to sell the company and ING Direct made the move to help increase it’s already market share in the financial market.

ShareBuilder has some important news. As of November 15, ShareBuilder has been acquired by ING DIRECT, the nation’s largest direct bank with over 5.5 million customers and $75 billion in U.S. assets (part of Netherlands-based ING, NYSE: ING). ING DIRECT shares our vision of helping Americans increase their savings. Rest assured there have been no changes made to your ShareBuilder account.

I’m more of a fan of E-trade myself, but I can see why ShareBuilder is a valuable acquisition for ING. For those of you out there who have had the privilege of using E-trade, you know that there are so many invaluable features, in fact, the future looks bright. For the technologically advanced and business savvy, e-trade accounts decentralize the banking industry in a sense. You no longer have to worry about where you bank, as e-trade refunds ATM fees in exchange for your business. You don’t have to go in and talk to financial advisers, you have all the information you need to make good financial decisions.

Here’s an excerpt of a news article about the acquisition at the News Observer website:

WILMINGTON, Del. - ING DIRECT USA, the nation’s largest direct bank (part of Netherlands-based ING NYSE: ING) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of ShareBuilder Corporation, a privately-held Seattle-based online financial services company. The acquisition which is part of ING DIRECT’s latest step toward meeting the financial needs of Main Street, USA, will add cost-effective, simple investment options to ING DIRECT’s consumer product offerings, which currently include online savings and checking accounts, CDs, Mutual Funds and mortgages. Through this transaction, ING DIRECT, through its broker-dealer subsidiary ING DIRECT Securities, Inc., has acquired 100% of ShareBuilder Corporation’s outstanding equity-related interests, including its subsidiary ShareBuilder Securities Corporation.

Sharebuilder is nice because it’s cheap and has a massive user base. The web interface, last I checked, is solid and it’s tough to get that much information in a centralized location at the low cost of membership, (it’s FREE to join). Anyway, this isn’t an article about the sites, just wanted to publish the news of merger. This shouldn’t have any kind of affect on users, but makes ING’s portfolio even more attractive for investors.

Fred is an Attorney, Entrepreneur, and Blogger from the Silicon Valley.
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