TIMELINE: ING splits into two

(Reuters) - Dutch bancassurer ING Group NV will split in two, shrinking itself into a smaller Europe-focused bank, in the most striking example yet of the deep changes the EU wants to force on banks that received state aid.

Following are key events at ING in the last year:

October 19, 2008 - Netherlands announces it will inject 10 billion euros into ING.

October 20 - Says it will sell its Taiwan life insurance unit to Fubon Financial for $600 million.

November 12 - Posts its first ever quarterly loss, its net loss for the third quarter was 478 million euros, after writedowns totaling 1.5 billion euros.

January 14, 2009 - Says it will cut 750 jobs, or 7 percent of its U.S. workforce.

January 26 - Says will take a 2008 loss of 1 billion euros, tap into 22 billion euros of Dutch state loan guarantees for its troubled loan portfolio and cut 7,000 jobs.

-- Michel Tilmant steps down as chief executive to be replaced by board chairman Jan Hommen, former chief financial officer of Dutch electronics group Philips.

February 3 - Says it was selling a C$1.75 billion ($1.42 billion) worth of its ownership stake in ING Canada.

March 26 - ING shelves its plans to apply for a banking license in China and announces plans to exit one of its two insurance joint ventures there, to shore up its capital needs.

April 9 - Says to divest operations worth up to 8 billion euros to reduce risk and will focus its banking activities on Europe.

June 4 - ING announces it will leave 10 of the 48 countries it currently operates in and sell 10 to 15 businesses over the next three to five years.

July 1 - Says will unify Dutch insurance operations under its Nationale-Nederlanden brand, and separately manage bank and insurance operations.

-- Announces 800 job cuts.

August 10 - Sells a Seoul office building for 400 billion won ($327 million) to a unit of South Korea's KB Financial Group.

September 15 - European Commission extends a review of a 22 billion euro ($32 billion) loan portfolio guarantee between ING and the Dutch state, saying the government may have paid too much.

September 25 - Says will sell its 51 percent stake in a wealth management joint venture to partner Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) for 1.1 billion euros ($1.6 billion).

October 7 - Julius Baer will buy ING's Swiss private banking assets for 520 million Swiss francs ($507 million), the European wealth management industry's biggest deal since the crisis began.

October 15 - Banking group OCBC clinches a deal to buy ING's private banking unit in Asia for $1.5 billion.

October 26 - Announces that it will split in two as part of a restructuring deal with the European Commission, turning into a smaller Europe-focused bank over the next four years.

-- Says it would pay back 50 percent of its aid from the Dutch state early and launch a 7.5 billion euro ($11.25 billion) rights issue.

(Writing by Carl Bagh, Editorial Reference Unit, Bangalore; Additional writing by Jijo Jacob; Additional writing and editing by David Cutler and Jon Loades-Carter)