Mumbai: Citigroup Inc, has announced the sale of one of its joint venture operations, CitiStreet to the ING Group for $900 million.

New York headquartered Citi yesterday announced the sale, in an all-cash transaction valued at $900 million.

The ING Group is headquartered in Amsterdam, though it has vast operations in the Americas. The group said it would fund the acquisition from internal accruals, and expects the deal to close before the start of the fourth quarter.

CitiStreet provides record keeping, administration and investment services to over 16,000 retirement plans, comprising  12 million participants. Both Citi and State Street own half of the business. The acquisition of CitiStreet by ING will make it the third-largest defined contribution manager in the US.

The entity will have around $351 billion as assets under management and those under administration. ING said they now cover around 14 million plan participants.

In a statement, Michel Tilmant, ING Group's chief executive and chairman of the board, said the acquisition was a suitable add-on business to its banking, investment, life insurance and retirement services operations.

Based out of Quincy, Massachusetts, came into being at the start of the new meillinieum, in 2000. It has around 3,700 employees and over $262 billion in assets under administration, at the clost of the last fiscal on 31 March.

Citigroup is liquidating assets to raise capital and funds to weather significant mounting losses arising from the sub prime crisis. The company said the transaction is part of its plan to sell non-core assets and reallocate capital. Citi posted losses of $5.1 billion during the first quarter, that too after writing down $12 billion and another $3.1 billion in increased credit costs for the period.

Boston head quartered State Street said that the sale of CitiStreet will allow it to "pursue opportunities that will continue to build on its global franchise focused on serving institutional investors."