Tycoon Lucio Tan has started the consolidation of his banking units into holding firm LT Group Inc. with the purchase of a 30.5-percent stake in Philippine National Bank, the surviving entity in the merger with Allied Banking Corp.
Tycoon Lucio Tan’s banking arms Philippine National Bank and Allied Banking Corp. have consummated their legal merger through a share-swap deal, with PNB as the surviving entity.
Tycoon Lucio Tan’s banking arms Philippine National Bank and Allied Banking Corp. have executed a much-awaited merger via a share swap deal.
Philippine National Bank, the banking arm of tycoon Lucio Tan, may take in a strategic investor only after completing its merger with Allied Banking Corp. within the next 18 to 24 months.
Taipan Lucio Tan has secured the last local and foreign regulatory approvals needed to finally merge by next month his banking arms Philippine National Bank and Allied Banking Corp.
While Bank of the Philippine Islands has entered an advanced stage of negotiations to acquire a controlling stake in Philippine National Bank, the prospective banking deal of the decade seems to have encountered a major stumbling block—getting the imprimatur of taipan Lucio Tan.
The Lucio Tan group has sold its niche US banking platform, San Francisco-based banking unit Oceanic Bank, to First National Bank of Northern California (FNB Bancorp) while working on the consolidation of local banking interests.
Two commercial banks on Thursday reported growth in profits for the first semester of the year due to healthy earnings from core lending and fee-based services, and hefty trading gains.
Lucio Tan-led Philippine National Bank posted a first-semester net profit attributable to equity holders of P1.77 billion, 145 percent higher year on year as hefty trading gains complemented steady interest earnings.
Philippine National Bank expects to secure the regulators’ approval of its planned merger with Allied Bank before the year ends after the Sandiganbayan denied the motion of the Philippine Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to stop the merger, said Estelito Mendoza, director and lawyer for PNB.
The trustee of Allied Bank’s 27.8 percent stake in the San Francisco-based Oceanic Bank has struck a deal to sell this bloc to the parent company of the First National Bank of Northern California.
Philippine National Bank and Allied Bank expect to complete their full integration within the next 18 months, creating the country’s fourth-largest private bank and generating more than P1 billion in yearly cost savings for the banking unit of tycoon Lucio Tan.
