ING Burned Again By Bad Investments

Dutch financial giant ING(symbol Quote), burned by another batch of bad investments, turned in fourth-quarter results that disappointed already diminished expectations.

Though the absolute worst may very well be behind ING, plenty of ugliness continues to hang around on its balance sheet.

The Amsterdam-based firm, bailed out twice by the Dutch government, took charges and writedowns of 1.7 billion euro in the fourth quarter, mostly to account for the declining value of investments in just about every asset class there is: real estate, real-estate derivatives, stocks, debt, private equity. This follows on the heels of the bank's historically bad fourth quarter, when it took $5 billion in writedowns. ...