Ljubljana, 11 September (STA) - NLB, a leading Slovenian bank, completed on Wednesday the acquisition of SLS Holdco, the parent company of Summit Leasing Slovenija, and its subsidiaries, including the Croatian company Mobil Leasing. NLB is thus becoming a leading provider of leasing services in Slovenia and re-entering Croatia after almost 30 years.
NLB signed the agreement to acquire the outright stake in SLS Holdco from Apollo Global Management, a private equity fund, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) last November.
Apollo and the EBRD had kept their leasing company when selling the Slovenian banking group NKBM to the Hungarian OTP group in 2021.
NLB's acquisition was fully cleared in early August, after it also obtained the Croatian regulator's approval to enter the financial services market in late June.
The bank will appoint Marko Jerič and Claus Peter Müller from the NLB group to the management of Summit Leasing, it said in a statement.
NLB's leasing operation in Slovenia, NLB Lease&Go, will be merged with Summit Leasing, which is expected in the second quarter of next year, NLB said.
"Mobil Leasing will meanwhile continue as a separate company on the Croatian market," NLB explained.
NLB hailed the completion of the transaction as "another step in NLB group's transformation into a regional champion. Even more importantly, it marks NLB's re-entry into the Croatian market after almost 30 years," NLB CEO Blaž Brodnjak was quoted as saying.
After being forced to wind down its leasing business in 2018 as part of its bailout terms, NLB launched a new Slovenian leasing business in spring 2020 with Lease&Go, and launched two new companies in North Macedonia and Serbia in 2022.
Its vision is for leasing to become an important part of the group. It expects it to eventually contribute more than EUR 1 billion to the group's total assets.
