Slovenia urges executive to give back EUR 1 million bonus

(LJUBLJANA) - Slovenia's government on Thursday urged the former chief executive of the country's largest bank, NLB, to return a one-million-euro (1.3-million-dollar) bonus and announced a new law to limit executive wages.

"The government, as the legal representative of the largest shareholder in the bank, will use all the means available to make the former CEO return the bonus," Finance Minister Franc Krizanic told journalists, citing the current economic crisis.

Prime Minister Borut Pahor also criticized the bonus, adding that he had talked by phone with the former head of Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), Marjan Kramar, and had urged him to give back the bonus he received in January.

"Such behaviour is unacceptable," Pahor said.

He said the bonus "could not be a fair price (for an executive) even if we were not in such a crisis."

Kramar left the post in January after his five-year mandate expired and received the bonus for his employment from 2004 to 2007, private online news channel 24ur reported Wednesday.

It added that Kramar did not receive a bonus for his work in 2008 when the bank, with a market share of 40 percent in Slovenia, registered a 60 percent drop in net profit.

Krizanic said the government would prepare an anti-crisis bill that would limit to 12,500-euros the monthly wages of executives in companies in which the state has a majority stake and would set a 90-percent tax on all revenues exceeding that amount.

NLB's largest shareholder is the state, with a stake of 45 percent, followed by Belgian banking group KBC with 30 percent.

Slovenia's average gross salary in January was 1,416 euros per month while the minimal wage guaranteed by the state was 590 euros.