ING U.S. announces Thomas Halloran as head of ING Financial Partners

ING U.S. recently announced the hiring of Thomas Halloran as president of ING Financial Partners (IFP), ING U.S.’ registered broker-dealer.

Mr. Halloran, who most recently served as managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch will replace Karl Lindberg, who is moving into a new role developing and overseeing IFP’s advisory practice, infrastructure and service model in support of a growing number of registered representatives.

Mr. Halloran will be based in Braintree, Mass., and report to Rich Linton, president of Individual Markets. In his new role he will be responsible for the overall management, strategy and growth of IFP, which recently announced that recruiting to the broker-dealer is up 25 percent from last year while the average production has nearly doubled.

In other ING news, ING U.S., which is in the process of rebranding as Voya Financial, announced recently the pricing of 33 million shares of common stock being offered by ING Group at a price of $29.50 per share.

The offering, which is part of a deliberate reduction of ING Group’s ownership of ING U.S., will bring its ownership to 59 percent at the closing of the transaction.

In a further effort to reduce ownership in ING U.S., ING Group has granted underwriters in the offering the option — exercisable within 30 days — to acquire up to 5 million shares from ING Group at the offering price. If fully realized, the option would reduce ING Group’s ownership to 57 percent.

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