Ljubljana, 18 February (STA) – Slovenia’s largest bank, NLB, is due to release unaudited financial statements for last year on Monday in line with the financial calendar. Unofficial calculations suggest the bank’s loss could exceed EUR 200m, which could result in the conversion of contingency convertible bonds into stock.
The state-owned bank made a loss of EUR 233m at the level of the core bank and EUR 239m in group loss in 2011. Officials indicated in December that bank would also end 2012 in the red.
The loss is the product of write-downs and provisions due to the large scope of bad loans. Two-thirds of these were made in December, according to unofficial information cited by the business daily Finance.
NLB still reported a group profit of EUR 16.2m and EUR 36m in profit at the parent bank for the period between January and September 2012.
A new high loss could push the Tier 1 capital ratio below 7%, which would call for a conversion of contingency convertible bonds into stock. EUR 320m worth of these bonds were bought by the state last year.
Central bank governor Marko Kranjec revealed last week that Slovenian banks generated a pre-tax loss of EUR 606m last year, up from EUR 539m in 2011. Impairments and provisions rose to EUR 1.446bn from EUR 1.206bn in 2011.
The NLB supervisory board reviewed 2012 figures on Thursday, but released no information to the public. A news conference for the management was