The session started last Friday and continued on Monday, when it was suspended after the government met to discuss extending additional guarantees to NLB bank in order to minimise the impact of lawsuits over Yugoslav-era deposits.

The motion devised as a safeguard protecting the bank from a potential burden of lawsuits from former Croatian savers as it is entering the privatisation phase was rejected by all ministers but Finance Minister Mateja Vraničar Erman.

The government insists on the viewpoint that neither Slovenia nor the defunct LB bank and its successor NLB are obligated to pay out foreign currency deposits in Croatia.

Unofficially, SSH supervisors now have two options, the first being setting the price range for a NLB share low, where they would risk not getting approval from the government as the state would get too little money for the bank.

Prime Minister Miro Cerar stressed on several occasions that the state must not sell NLB at a low price as the interests of Slovenian taxpayers would have to be taken into consideration.

In case the SSH overestimates the price of the bank, it on the other hand risks discouraging potential buyers and failing to sell at least 50% of the bank, which had been promised to the European Commission in exchange for its approval of the 2013 state-sponsored bailout.

Minister Vraničar Erman has said that if the latest attempt to sell NLB failed, the government would need to take alternative measures. It is too early to speak about these measures, but they will certainly include further talks with the European Commission, she added.

The price range is necessary for the IPO prospectus that needs to be cleared by the regulator and published by the end of the month if the procedure is to be completed by mid-June as planned.

The SSH and NLB published the intention for the IPO on 15 May after approval by the European Commission to the government's plan to sell the bank in two phases.

At least half of NLB is planned to be sold by the end of the year, and up to 25% minus one share by the end of next year. The bank's shares are to be floated on the stock exchanges in Ljubljana and London.

Once the prospectus is cleared by the Securities Market Agency, the order book will be open for about 14 days. The plan is to offer 90% of the available shares to institutional and 10% to small investors.

The developments come after NLB has recently published its group results for the first quarter of the year, reporting a 56% rise in net profit to EUR 81.6m or more than two-thirds of the result for the entire last year.

The core bank, whose total assets represent 67% of total assets of the NLB group, holds a 23.7% market share in Slovenia and serves more than 47,000 companies and 751,000 individuals.

The group employing 2,873 people has a total of 365 offices in Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, including 113 in Slovenia.