Lucio Co to hike stake in PBCom

Retailer lucio Co is set to hike his interest in Philippine Bank of Communications to nearly 50 percent, from around 38 percent, with a deal to buy out the stake held by British fund Ashmore through ISM Communications Corp.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Friday, ISM said its board had accepted the offer of Co—through his delegated entity VFC Land Resources Inc.—to purchase ISM’s 59.24 million shares in PBCom at P33 apiece. This is the same price per share at which PBCom had agreed to issue new shares to Co, allowing the latter to acquire an initial 37.67 percent interest in the bank for P5.97 billion.

PBCom chair Eric Recto said in a text message that the additional shares acquired by Co would give him an additional 12.32-percent stake in the bank.

The additional stake in PBCom will cost Co around P1.95 billion based on the selling price per share of P33 apiece.

Recto will then have a stake equivalent to about 14 percent of PBCom’s expanded capital.

Now that it is the bank’s single largest shareholder, the Co group is not yet keen on revamping the management of PBCom, said Leonardo Dayao, president of both flagship Puregold Price Club Inc. and conglomerate Cosco Capital Inc.

“We’d like to know the bank first. We’ll give the present management the chance because they have their business plan worked out,” he said.

Asked whether PBCom would soon be folded into publicly listed Cosco, Dayao said: “Although it would seem like there’s a fit, at this time, we have no firm plans yet.”