Maribor, 12 March (STA) - Aleš Hauc, the new chief executive of NKBM
bank, said Monday that the bank and the group would have to be slimmed down
and consolidated, including with layoffs and the mergers of subsidiaries.
But he does not deem it necessary to recapitalise the bank at this
point.
$Group and core bank businesses will have to be
redefined...Non-performing businesses have to be offloaded,$ Hauc said
in his first statement for the media following his appointment last
week.
Hauc argued that NKBM needed a special unit for the ongoing
monitoring of customers, arguing that the majority of banks with a high
share of soured loans had not been prepared for the crisis and for the wave
of defaults by clients.
Credit risk cannot be lowered without active
engagement with the clients, he said. Moreover, he said, $the times
when companies came to the bank are over, now the bank needs to actively
market its services.$
Relations with investors and shareholders
will be more intensive in future, according to Hauc, who sees this as one
of the ways to improve the bank's reputation and shareholder
value.
However, he stressed that NKBM was still a $reputable,
safe and stable bank$. $It's got a good international reputation
which I'm sure it will improve further.$
Hauc, the boss of
postal operator Pošta Slovenije, was named CEO on Friday, three weeks
after Andrej Plos stepped down as chairman after just a month and a half on
the job.
His main task will be to return the bank to profitability
after it posted a group net loss of EUR 53.66m for 2011 due to high
provisions and impairments.