ING has displayed some nifty footwork. The Dutch insurance and banking group is in the buy and hold game. Still, it chose to offload equities at the right time in the second quarter. The resulting capital gain helped to take some of the sting out of lower investment income. Earnings of €1.9bn may be down but were still better than expected.

Rivals have more to be green about. Take funding. For ING, funding itself either wholesale or via retail deposits is no sweat. In the short-term money markets it can fund itself well below Libor. And, while competition for precious customer deposits – accounting for over half of ING’s funding base – has hotted up, ING has been able to attract its share, without seeing the cost of acquiring them spiral out of control. It has also managed to staunch the outflows from ING Direct, its online banking arm, in the fierce UK market. The end result is a financial group that still talks of balance sheet growth, not shrinkage.