Slovenia’s Triglav makes bid for pension fund manager

Zavarovalnica Triglav, Slovenia’s biggest insurance company, has announced it intends to make a takeover bid for Skupna pokojninska družba, a major pensions provider within the country. Skupna deals exclusively in supplementary voluntary pension insurance, and manages €218m in assets on behalf of its 61,000 policyholders, giving it a 21% market share in Slovenia.            

Triglav already holds 30% of Skupna’s shares. The other major shareholders are NLB Ljubljana – part of Slovenia’s largest international financial group – with 28%, and Gorenjska banka with 26%.

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Slovenia lawmakers strip former premier Jansa of parliament seat

Slovenian lawmakers late Wednesday voted against allowing an ex-premier of this small eurozone country to hold his parliament seat while serving a two-year jail sentence. The vote automatically terminates Janez Jansa ’s term in the 90-seat legislature, which he won after successfully running from prison in the July 13 parliamentary election. The vote to end Mr. Jansa’s parliament term, supported by 58 lawmakers, is expected to help end weeks of debate on the issue that distracted the government from tackling the country’s economic problems. However, Mr. Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, or SDS, the largest opposition bloc in the parliament, said it would consider challenging the vote on their chairman’s parliament seat at the country’s Constitutional Court. Joze Tanko, the head of the SDS parliamentary caucus, said the vote to end Mr. Jansa’s term was against the country’s “constitution and law.”

The center-left government, which initiated the process of stripping Mr. Jansa of his legislature seat, has maintained Wednesday’s decision is a legally based “political decision,” said Milan Brglez, the speaker of parliament and an official in the Party of Miro Cerar, the leader of the three-party ruling coalition. In December, Slovenia narrowly dodged an international bailout for its state-owned banks by injecting $4.4 billion of taxpayers’ money into the ailing banking sector. The Slovenian economy is projected to return to growth this year after contracting or stagnating since 2009. The government has to carry out planned sales of state assets to pare its sovereign debt, equal to about 80% of Slovenia’s total annual output, and above the European Union’s 60% limit.

Mr. Jansa, who was the prime minister from 2012 to 2013 and 2004 to 2008, began to serve his sentence weeks before the summer election. He has denied wrongdoing and appealed his sentence—which centered on a bribery conviction related to an army procurement contract eight years ago—to the country’s Constitutional Court. “I’m also ready to take my fight against the sentence all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights,” Mr. Jansa said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September. Since parliament’s inauguration in early August, Mr. Jansa attended the legislature on prison furlough. But he was missing from the session Wednesday. Instead, a sign reading ‘Janez Jansa, political prisoner’ was placed on his seat. Mr. Jansa has been revered by his supporters for his role in Slovenia gaining independence during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Around 500 of Mr. Jansa’s supporters rallied in front of the parliament on Wednesday against stripping him of his legislature seat.

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New boss appointed to Slovenia's military intelligence system

A new chief of Slovenian military intelligence was named here on Thursday after Bostjan Perne, general director of the Intelligence and Security Service, was relieved of his post by the Ministry of Defense.

Gorazd Rednak will take over Perne's job, Defence Minister Janko Veber said, noting that Rednak will be able to start working immediately because he held the post for a short period of time in 2000.

After his dismissal, Perne will remain in the security sector as a member of the leadership of the Civil Protection and Disaster Relief Administration, according to the defense minister.The Slovenian coaltion government, headed Prime Minister Miro Cerar, has changed the chief of the general staff, the head of the intelligence agency, and the police commissioner since it took office in September 2014.