ING is advising on the €450m ($487m) sale of a business to Schneider Electric in France, providing the Dutch bank with its largest European M&A league table credit for the year to date.

ING has been trying to shed its image as a small cap adviser. The Dutch bank failed to make it into the Thomson Financial league table of the top 25 M&A advisers for the first half of 2003 and rarely appears on such large European M&A deals.