Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- ING Groep NV, the biggest Dutch financial-services firm, agreed to buy more than 3 billion pounds ($5.24 billion) of retail deposits held by U.K. customers of two Icelandic banks for an undisclosed amount.

ING will buy 2.5 billion pounds of deposits from a U.K. unit of Kaupthing Bank hf and 538 million pounds from Landsbanki Islands hf's Heritable Bank, the Amsterdam-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Pilar Teixeira, a spokeswoman for ING, declined to comment on the price.

ING bought the deposits as the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority took control of Reykjavik-based Landsbanki and Kaupthing received a 500 million-euro ($680 million) loan from the central bank. Any retail depositors at the units whose business hasn't been transferred to ING will be paid out in full through the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the U.K. government said in a separate statement.

``This is the right course of action to protect savers, ensure financial stability, and safeguard the interests of the taxpayers,'' the U.K. Treasury said.

Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander Ltd., a U.K. unit of the Icelandic bank, was put into administration today by British authorities. Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander Capital Markets Ltd., a separate business and legal entity, said in a statement that it continues to operate and has more than five times the regulatory capital required.

Icesave

ING said last month it aims to double client assets at its online-banking unit in five years by taking over companies, expanding in the U.S. and entering Japan. ING Direct, started 11 years ago in Canada and led by Dick Harryvan since 2006, had retail balances, including mortgages and savings, of 318 billion euros at the end of June.

ING fell 1.55 euros, or 11 percent, to 12.79 euros in Amsterdam trading, the lowest since May 2003. The stock is down 52 percent this year.

The acquired deposits are similar to those ING's online banking unit is holding in the U.K., belonging to customers less sensitive to interest rates, Teixeira said.

The U.K. government also guaranteed ``that no retail depositors will lose any money as a result of the closure'' of Landsbanki's Icesave Internet Bank. Landsbanki said yesterday it blocked customers at its U.K. online savings unit.

Clients' access to Icesave's accounts in the Netherlands was also closed. Landsbanki's Dutch unit said it can no longer meet its savings bank obligations, citing financial problems at Iceland's second-largest lender stemming from the credit crisis.

Rate Cuts

Icesave's Dutch unit has 1.7 billion euros in deposits in 125,000 accounts, Dutch Central Bank spokesman Herman Lutke Schipholt said. ``We are contacting the Iceland authorities to get clarification about Icesave and to make sure they fulfill their obligations,'' said Finance Ministry spokesman Jilles Heringa.

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and four other central banks lowered interest rates today in an unprecedented coordinated effort to ease the economic effects of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The International Monetary Fund said the global economy is heading for a recession in 2009 and increased its estimate of losses from the financial crisis to $1.4 trillion.

``We've been in this financial hurricane for a while, so it's no surprise that all stops are basically being pulled out to see if we can change the momentum of market sentiment,'' Arkadi Kuhlmann, who heads ING's online banking unit in the U.S., told Bloomberg News. ``We were hard-pressed last Friday to see whether anything would top the bail-out headline news and here we have it.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Martijn van der Starre in Amsterdam at vanderstarre@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 8, 2008 13:40 EDT