First Pacific Co. Ltd gets 60% stake in Philippine Star

MANILA, Philippines—Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. Ltd has sealed a deal to acquire a controlling stake in The Philippine STAR, further enlarging its media footprint in the Philippines, which already included stakes in various newspapers and a television station, CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said on Monday.

Pangilinan, who also sits as chairman of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., a unit of the First Pacific, said the group last week sealed an agreement to increase its ownership in the major broadsheet to 60 percent from 20 percent, previously.

“We are 60 percent right now,” Pangilinan told reporters at the sidelines of the contract signing with the Department of Transportation and Communications for a P1.72-billion public private partnership deal to build a “tap-and-go” ticketing system for elevated railways in Metro Manila.

“My understanding its today [ Monday] is the payment,” said Pangilinan, adding that the acquisition would be done through PLDT’s MediaQuest Holdings Inc.

Pangilinan declined to say how much he paid to acquire the additional 40 percent in the newspaper, which was established in 1986 by the Belmonte, Soliven and Borjal families as the administration of Corazon “Cory” Aquino was swept into power amid popular revolt.

The Belmonte clan, which gained control of The Philippine STAR eventually, could not be reached for comment on Monday.

PLDT  has been seeking to expand its footprint in the media content space, in line with a convergence strategy between telcos and content providers it believes is the business model of the future.

MediaQuest now controls TV5, the third-biggest television network, and BusinessWorld, the country’s oldest business daily. It also controls over 10 percent of The Philippine Daily Inquirer.

But its efforts to expand in television have been challenging as TV5 struggles to draw ratings away from much larger competitors ABS-CBN Corp. and GMA Network Inc.

To expand its presence quickly, PLDT has made at least three attempts  to acquire GMA Network but the deals fell through each time.

The latest attempt, revived late last year, did not prosper as businessman Ramon Ang reportedly outbid PLDT for a 30 percent stake in GMA Network, jointly owned by the Duavit, Gozon and Jimenez families, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

GMA declined to comment on those reports but Pangilinan said last month that his latest offer to GMA’s owners had already “expired.”

Apart from its flagship newspaper, The Philippine STAR group includes  Pilipino STAR Ngayon, a tabloid style newspaper; Freeman, Cebu’s oldest English language newspaper; Banat, a tabloid published in Cebuano; and People Asia Magazine, which profiles personalities in the Philippines and the region, according to information posted on its website.