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Troubled ING Advisors chooses Valerie Brown as CEO

Facing an unclear future, the ING Advisors Network has picked an ING veteran as its new CEO.

Facing an unclear future, the ING Advisors Network has picked an ING veteran as its new CEO.
This afternoon, the network, which has four broker-dealers and more than 7,000 reps and advisers, said that Valerie Brown has been named its chief executive. She replaces John Simmers, who retired last month.
Ms. Brown, who has been with the firm for 13 years and has served in a variety of executive roles at ING, takes the job as uncertainty surrounds the broker-dealer network’s future.
About two weeks after Mr. Simmers said he was retiring, the company in mid-April said that three of the four broker-dealers in the ING Advisors Network were facing a round of strategic reviews that could lead to their sale.
That came as ING Groep NV of Amsterdam, Netherlands, was reviewing the status of its global business lines to determine which ones are part of the insurance company giant’s core and which are not.
The broker-dealers whose fates hang in the balance are: Financial Network Investment Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., Multi-Financial Securities Corp. of Denver and Primevest Financial Services Inc. of St. Cloud, Minn.
The decision would affect roughly 5,000 reps at the three firms.
No decisions have been made about those broker-dealers, an ING spokesman, Dana Ripley, said today.
The one broker-dealer ING intends to hang on to is ING Financial Partners Inc. of Des Moines, Iowa, she said.
Most recently, Ms. Brown was president of the ING Retail Annuity Market Segment.