April 13 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's largest lender, state-owned Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), said on Friday its consolidated net profit soared 105% year-on-year in 2017, reaching 225.1 million euro ($277.3 million).
The reduction in NLB's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio exceeded the budgeted target and came in at 9.2%, while non-performing exposure (NPE) ratio amounted to 6.67% at the end of last year, NLB said in a filing with the Ljubljana Stock Exchange.
"The Supervisory Board is very satisfied with the results, the best in the history of the NLB Group.We are pleased by the noticeable progress achieved in digitalisation, streamlining and modernisation of processes and services, which confirms that the entire NLB Group has embraced the technological development and digitalization as new opportunities for future growth," the chairman of the lender's supervisory board, Primoz Karpe, said.
Detailed information on the performance of the bank in 2017 will be available in the NLB Group annual report, which will be published on Monday, April 16, NLB said.
NLB was one of two Slovenian banks alongside NKBM to show a minor capital shortfall in the adverse scenario of the stress test conducted by the European Central Bank in October 2015.
In December 2013, the Slovenian government stepped in to recapitalize the country's three biggest lenders - NLB, NKBM and Abanka, narrowly avoiding an international bailout.
The European Commission said last week the aid granted to NLB by Slovenia's government in 2013 is unlawful, because the government had failed to deliver on its commitment to sell the bank by the end of 2017.
"Moreover, Slovenia has not proposed a divestiture trustee to sell NLB’s foreign Balkan subsidiaries by November 30, 2017," the Commission said in a statement published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
($ = 0.811899 euro)
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