MVP speaks… or tweets

Businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan took some time away from what we can only imagine is a busy schedule to keep it real with his Twitter followers Monday night. From 7 to 8 p.m., Pangilinan’s personal account @iamMVP answered queries from his more than 68,0000 followers from serious topics like business and sports (he’s keen on the NBA team Golden State Warriors) to more mundane matters like his favorite food (pork chop, apparently).

The exchange was surprisingly candid, if not tongue-in-cheek at times. The limit, it seemed, rested on the imagination of his followers, as the tycoon who runs several of the country’s largest utilities, telcos and mining interests, played along and even LOL’ed (laughed out loud) with his audience.

One follower, @Aldrich_BL, gave a hypothetical situation and asked whom Pangilinan would save in a burning house: anti-mining advocate Gina Lopez or Ramon Ang, president of San Miguel Corp., one of MVP’s biggest business rivals. “No doubt, the house,” Pangilinan said.

Much of the queries also dealt with business and Pangilinan said all he could without violating disclosure rules while steering clear of touchy topics, like those to do with Manila Electric Co., which is seeking an unpopular rate hike.

He shared, for example, that the group was on track to take control of Philippine Star next month, that they were keen on wind power and were unlikely to ever invest in gambling, and they were keen on a dedicated children’s hospital like the Dr. Fe del Mundo Medical Center in Quezon City. “Yes, we need a dedicated children’s hospital,” MVP tweeted. A source said the group recently received word that the 107-bed hospital in Quezon City founded by the late Dr. Fe Del Mundo, a legendary local female pediatrician, Ramon Magsaysay public service awardee and a national scientist, was in need of fresh investment. To date, the MVP group has eight tertiary hospitals with a total of 2,137 beds in its portfolio.

With MVP going high-profile and now even becoming more active in social media—thus reaching out to “digital natives” —the topic of politics will inevitably crop out. But when a user asked him whether he’s considering to run for president in 2016, MVP said: “No politics in my blood.”

So candid were his tweets that Pangilinan, who has been active in the Philippine business scene for well over a decade, also shared he did have an autobiography on the way but only to be published posthumously.

“Maraming matatamaan,” he said. Miguel R. Camus and Doris C. Dumlao

Restive DBP staff

There’s more trouble at the state-owned Development Bank of the Philippines where junior and senior officers have been chafing under the hiring wave being implemented by the bank’s management.

So restive have the officials become that they have circulated a petition addressed to the bank’s board of directors assailing the hiring of officials whom they believe were unqualified, as many of them did not possess the required civil service eligibility and qualifications standards established by the Civil Service Commission.

Worse, these new hires—several of whom are retired personnel from private banks—were being paid more than long-serving DBP officials with either equal or even higher salary grade levels.

In one example cited in the petition, a new bank senior vice president with a salary grade of SL-17 receives a monthly wage of P311,800. This is equal to the monthly wage of another SVP (who has put in more years in the bank) with a higher rank of SL-18.

The petition pointed out that DBP’s recent hiring practices violated its own internally formulated wage rules mandating that new hires receive the minimum salary for their pay grade at the start, then progress to the midpoint and maximum salary grades based on their merit and performance—something that is “COAble”, said the petition referring to the rules of the Commission on Audit.

Word within the bank is that most of these newly hired senior officers were recently retired officials of Bank of the Philippine Islands, where current DBP president Gil Buenaventura served before his retirement from the private sector.

According to our source, Buenaventura was asked about this policy during the last forum he had with employees, where he explained that the outside hiring policy was made because there were no qualified employees internally. He was booed for this reply, our source said.

In any case, the bank officials are now petitioning the DBP board to remedy the skewed payscale. Will the board listen? Let’s wait and see. Daxim L. Lucas

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