Local management at ING Direct had no comment to make yesterday about a story on Bloomberg News that its parent, the Netherlands financial services group, ING, was "weighing the sale" of the Australian business.Rumours of a sale have been floating around since 2009. They were revived most recently in the Australian Financial Review a couple of months back.  On that occasion, a local representative said the AFR report confused the sale of some property investments with something bigger, but yesterday no one was talking.The Bloomberg report said that Standard Chartered was a possible buyer.ING Direct has a A$37 billion mortgage portfolio, making it the fifth-largest home lender in the Australian market. It has $23 billion in deposits and reported a net profit of $275 million for the year to December.The report said that ING Group was also considering divesting operations in the US and in Asia.