Biz Buzz: Don’t spread the ‘love’
This popular TV game show host isn’t going to take it sitting down if this big corporate sponsor decides to place ads in another game show—even if it’s not necessarily jumping ship but only spreading the love, so to speak.
The talk around town is that this corporate sponsor, a big player in its league, recently found itself in between the devil and the deep blue sea after promising to support another program hosted and produced by a famous athlete. When Game show Host A found out, he insisted on “exclusivity” (the other show directly competes with his during weekends).
Monogamy doesn’t usually exist in multimedia marketing as corporate sponsors naturally want to optimize mileage from various media outfits and platforms but to assuage Game show Host A, the corporate sponsor is said to be exploring other options—including the use of different corporate vehicles—to keep its promise to Game show Host B.
Incidentally, both game show hosts threw their weight behind the principal of this corporate sponsor last year. Tough.—Doris C. Dumlao
Batting for the big league
Construction and engineering firm Megawide Construction Corp.—apart from enlisting the family of tycoon Henry Sy as a strategic investor during its stock market debut earlier this year—is bringing in a Japanese partner to flesh out plans to venture into infrastructure-building.
Industry sources said the company would now like to seek an active role as a proponent of some public-private partnership (PPP) projects and not just rely on winning bidders to award big-ticket deals to contractors like itself.
Industry sources said Megawide earlier had “formal” talks with its prospective Japanese partner and was now finalizing the tie-up. With the technical and financial muscle from the Japanese partner, Megawide is positioning for large-scale PPP projects.
The first on Megawide’s plate is the P1.96-billion Daang Hari-South Luzon Expressway project, which aims to ease and decongest traffic in Cavite, Las Piñas and Muntinlupa. A source confirmed that Megawide was among the 18 groups keen on bidding for this road project—the first in the PPP pipeline, which everyone hopes to see moving faster to convert what is often jokingly referred to as “Puro Powerpoint Presentation” into reality.—Doris C. Dumlao
News wars
The war for news talent is raging in new battlefields as Solar Entertainment and ABC-5 beef up their news divisions.
Those in the know tell Biz Buzz that Solar TV has tapped the talents of former ABS-CBN veterans Jing Magsaysay and Pal Marquez to lead the growth of Solar TV news. A new studio is also reportedly being built in Mandaluyong City to support its diversification into news operations from sports and entertainment.
ABC 5 led by businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan, meanwhile, wants to battle it out with ABS-CBN and GMA 7 in the highly profitable international television operations, and is getting talent from ABS-CBN to take charge.
As to whether there is room for more news channels, however, remains to be seen. But it is sure that failure to bring in the viewers will mean millions of pesos in investments down the drain.—Tina Arceo-Dumlao
All that glitters is…
The upcoming PSE main index realignment will unfortunately strike out a recent market favorite, Lepanto Consolidated Mining, effective September 12, which means index-based funds may dump the stock.
Mining enthusiasts, however, take comfort in still buoyant global gold prices and the likely exercise by Gold Fields Ltd. of its option to acquire a 60-percent interest in the undeveloped gold-copper Far Southeast deposit in Northern Luzon. Nearly a year after the South African mining giant inked the option deal with mining magnate Felipe Yap for $340 million, mining pundits are optimistic that Gold Fields will proceed with the project.
During the financial reporting of Gold Fields in Johannesburg earlier this month, company CEO Nick Holland said that the FSE project now has eight underground diamond drill rigs turning, with preliminary results confirming the company’s deposit estimates.
“Our aim is to deliver a first resource model, by March 2012. Concurrently, we are making good progress on a range of technical, social and environmental studies required to advance this project,” Holland said.
If Lepanto could sustain the active trading seen over the last three months, the company could regain a slot in the PSEi in the next semi-annual review. A potential dampener, of course, would be if gold prices would reverse dramatically. In its studies, however, Gold Fields had projected a much more conservative price level for gold than current market prices.—Doris C. Dumlao
Back in the saddle
San Miguel Corp. is scheduled to be readmitted into the main share index of the Philippine Stock Exchange next month after a 10-month absence—the only time in the bourse’s history when the conglomerate was not part of the benchmark.
Theoretically, the company had complied with the bourse’s 12-percent free float requirement as early as four months ago when it sold additional shares to the public, but had to wait in the wings for the PSE’s regular index adjustment schedule. Of course, the companies of the San Miguel group are the most valuable in the country in terms of market capitalization, with total value of P1.13 trillion as of last week.
This was followed by the PLDT group with a combined market capitalization of P866.5 billion (including Meralco’s P290.8 billion); the SM group with P808.4 billion; the Ayala group with P766.8 billion; and the Gokongwei group with P439.1 billion.—Daxim L. Lucas
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