Slovenia's bad bank understaffed

Slovenia's Bank Assets Management Company (BAMC) said on Friday that it would take months before completing toxic asset transfer from two major banks in the country. Attributing the delay to understaffing, BAMC, the so-called bad banks, said in a statement that Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) and Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor (NKBM) will continue to manage the assets themselves in coming four months. NLB and NKBM are the two largest banks in Slovenia. BAMC, established in mid-March, signed with NLB and NKBM key agreements on the transfer of bad loans soon after the result of stress tests over eight major banks in Slovenia was made public last week. The eight banks, including NLB, NKBM and Abanka, are totally short of 4.78 billion euros (6.5 billion U.S. dollars), according to the EU-mandated stress tests.