Singapore - Singapore's Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) on Thursday announced the purchase of Dutch bank ING's Asian private banking business, making it one of the biggest players in wealth management in the region.

The purchase of ING Asia Private Bank and its affiliated entities in Asia would cost 1.46 billion US dollars, OCBC said in a statement.

"The acquisition ... marks a transformational step in OCBC bank's private banking business," it said, adding that the purchase would more than triple OCBC's private client assets to 23 billion US dollars, thus creating a leading Asian private bank.

"We are committed to investing more in this business and look forward to capturing greater market share of the growing number of high net worth individuals in Asia and other markets," OCBC chief executive officer David Conner said.

OCBC, Singapore's third-largest lender, said that strategically it was important to participate in the future growth of private banking in Asia and Singapore from a position of strength.

Asia was the fastest growing market for private banking in the world, the bank said, with assets under management in the region expected to grow by 12.8 per cent annually between 2008 and 2013, well above the global growth of 8.1 per cent.

In the bid for ING's Asian assets OCBC beat Singapore's biggest lender DBS Group, which pulled out the race some weeks ago. London-based HSBC Holdings reportedly was the third contender.

ING, which received a capital injection of 10 billion euros (14.9 billion dollars) from the Dutch government during the global financial crisis, had announced that it planned to divest more of its non-core business activities.

Last week, ING sold its Swiss operation for 505 million US dollars to Swiss banking firm Julius Baer Group. (dpa)