Ljubljana - Slovenia's largest banking group, NLB, has decided to suspend the sale of its asset management arm NLB Skladi, which was launched in mid-2021, the business newspaper Finance has reported, quoting NLB chairman Blaž Brodnjak.

"Now is not the time to sell good assets. We may continue the sale at some point in the future," Brodnjak was quoted as saying.

NLB launched the sale of NLB Skladi last May, and this January the newspaper Dnevnik reported that the highest bid was submitted by the insurance group Zavarovalnica Triglav and the Austrian financial group Erste Bank.

According to the NLB's report for the third quarter of 2021, NLB Skladi is the largest asset and mutual fund management company in Slovenia. At the end of last September, it had a 37.2% market share, up by more than 3 percentage points year-on-year.

In the first nine months of last year, the company had EUR 179.1 million in net inflows, which was 53.9% of all net inflows on the market.

NLB Skladi managed EUR 1.98 billion in assets at the end of last September, which is almost a third more than at the end of September 2020.