ING to Buy Aetna’s Financial Services Unit

Aetna Inc. agreed to sell its financial services and international businesses to Dutch insurance and banking giant ING Group for $5 billion in cash, allowing the nation’s largest health insurer to focus on its ailing health-care business. ING also would assume $2.7 billion in Aetna debt. The acquisition would make ING the largest life insurance and annuity broker in the U.S. in terms of premiums and the No. 6 insurer in terms of assets. Shares of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna rose 6 cents to close at $59.06 on the New York Stock Exchange. ING’s American depositary receipts closed unchanged.