The supervisors of Slovenia's largest bank, which is majority state-owned, got acquainted with the results today, highlighting provisions for write-downs among the reasons for the negative figures.

NLB's provisions and impairments stood at EUR 264.2m in the first nine months, a 49% increase on the same period last year. At group level the figure was up by 22% to EUR 306.9m.

The bank stressed that things became especially bad in the third quarter, which saw a large number of insolvency proceedings. The situation is calming down this month and NLB expects a better result at the end of the year.

Without the provisions, the NLB group would have recorded a profit of EUR 187.6m and the core bank a profit of EUR 126.5m.

The supervisors also examined cost saving measures, establishing that costs were cut by more than EUR 10m or 3% compared to last year.

The group's capital adequacy ratio was estimated at 12% on 30 September and the Tier 1 capital ratio at 7.7%. The ratios for the core bank were 12% and 8.5%, respectively.