Italy says banks should be given reasonable time to sell bad loans

VALLETTA: Italy’s finance minister said banks should be allowed to offload their bad loans in a “reasonable” time, urging the European Central Bank (ECB) to be cautious in its push to clear banks’ balance sheets of soured credit.

The European Central Bank is pushing lenders with a high ratio of so-called non-performing loans (NPLs) to sell them, causing Italian banks to rush to offload their bad loans, which account for a quarter of the EU total.