(Previously Not Ranked) The Dutch financial services giant ING Group took its lumps in the global credit crisis, but its ING Direct multinational banking strategy remains intact, at least for now, as something of a world-beater. Its customers on three continents increased in 2009 to 22.9 million from 22.2 million — numbers exceeded by only a few online banks in their domestic markets — while client balances rose 11 percent, to €353.8 billion.

In April 2009, ING announced a recovery plan that included consolidation of its retail banking operations and, over four years, divestiture of insurance and asset management. On January 1, Dick Harryvan retired as CEO of ING Direct and Eli Leenaars, 49, took over as CEO of a reconstituted retail division including ING Direct.

A 19-year ING veteran, Leenaars, 49, had spent the previous five years on the group executive board overseeing retail banking worldwide, private banking, and operations and IT. He’ll preside over some retrenchment: ING Direct USA, which lost €7 million last year, must be sold by 2013 as a condition of the European Commission–approved restructuring plan. And a planned launch in Japan, which would have been ING Direct’s tenth country and its first in Asia, was aborted last year. Still, “ING remains committed to the ING Direct franchise as a strong contributor to growth going forward,” says Leenaars.

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