Biz Buzz: RCBC pays up

RCBC is slowly putting the Bangladesh cyberheist issue behind it as it recently fully paid the P500-million balance of a P1-billion fine imposed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The balance was set to fall due in August but the bank settled it three months ahead of schedule to finally move on from the dark moment in its history and focus on matching or even exceeding its consistent annual net income of at least P5 billion recorded in previous years.

The prepayment was done quietly, a departure from the circus that greeted the involvement of RCBC in the unprecedented cyberheist that was closely followed around the world.

Being quiet, however, seems to be the signature of RCBC’s new president, Gil Buenaventura, who quietly toiled behind the scenes in BPI as senior executive vice president and chief operating officer, handling major departments at the same time, as it grew. And then again at the state-owned Development Bank of the Philippines, which he helped grow in terms of income and total resources.

How the Yuchengco group’s Helen Dee got him to accept the RCBC presidency at the height of the cyberheist issue still needs to be explained. But the quiet Buenaventura is not the type to say. —TINA ARCEO-DUMLAO

Credit Suisse shakeup

The Philippine unit of Credit Suisse underwent a shakeup recently, naming a new man to head the local office.

Of course, the global investment banking giant had been very active in the local capital markets in recent years—albeit quietly—and now its leadership decided to shake things up a bit, given the changing market dynamics both here and abroad.

Taking the helm of “CS” in the country is Michael de Guzman, who was poached from the Philippine office of Australian investment banking powerhouse Macquarie Capital.

Incidentally, since both Credit Suisse and Macquarie have their Philippine offices at The Enterprise Center in Makati City, it won’t be much of a change for De Guzman in terms of his physical location (well, maybe a different floor and a different tower within the same complex).

It will be, however, a slightly bigger change for the former head of the local CS office, Johnny Escaler. Word on the street is that he left to work with his wealthy uncle, Michael Escaler, and perhaps even, according to industry wags, start his own hedge fund. Johnny will also work with his wife on their sizable rental property portfolio.

Meanwhile, Biz Buzz learned that CS’ investment banking co-head Chiqui Huang had an opportunity to get all her unvested benefits with early retirement and took it. Needless to say, the amount is substantial (and when you say “substantial” in investment banking, we’re talking millions, at least eight digits).

We hear Huang will join Simon Paterno at Bank of the Philippine Islands as a managing director, but this has yet to be announced formally.

In any case, De Guzman, as CS’ new head, has excellent experience in mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets and infrastructure (useful under the current administration). More importantly, he has good relationships with a number of major conglomerates with his 12 years as coverage banker in the Philippines for Macquarie.

He will be backstopped in consumer and retail banking by Mark Velasquez, who recently came back home after a decade with CS in Singapore. All in all, a good combination to face the … uhm … “dynamic” Philippine environment.

And just to be sure, Credit Suisse’s new Philippine boss is not the same Michael de Guzman who was a Filipino geologist allegedly thrown out of a helicopter over the Indonesian jungle in the mid-1990s after the Bre-X gold scam unraveled. Neither is he the Michael de Guzman who allegedly tried to forge a deal with the government over some missing Marcos money during the presidency of the late Corazon Aquino. —DAXIM L. LUCAS

Funding the Maroons

If the UP men’s basketball team performs better next UAAP season, it’s because mass housing guru Januario Jesus “JJ” Atencio, president of 8990 Holdings, has agreed to fund the UP Maroons’ training at the highly acclaimed Impact Basketball summer training in Las Vegas. This is the same training program that the Ateneo team uses for its much-admired varsity team.

Atencio isn’t a UP alumnus (he’s Atenean) but he agreed to shell out a few million pesos to help the basketball team of the premier State U to support new UP president Danny Concepcion and because he sees the “underdog” parallelism between his housing company 8990 and the UP Maroons.

As far as basketball is concerned, Atencio notes that the UP team isn’t as highly regarded as Ateneo or La Salle, similar to how 8990 is like an “underdog” in the stock market when compared to the likes of Ayala Land Inc. or SM Prime. However, he believes that with proper funding and training, the UP Maroons have the potential to be a stronger team in the future.

8990 and the UP cagers will soon work on a series of inspirational videos related to the rising underdog theme.

The benefactor has also requested UP Maroons to hold basketball clinics in provinces where 8990 has existing developments. Apart from entertaining the homeowners with good exhibition games, Atencio is looking forward to the varsity team training the kids of 8990 homeowners.

Atencio has yet to commit whether this sponsorship will be an annual thing but at the very least, the window has opened for the Maroons this year. Hopefully, the “underdogs” will attract more benefactors especially among UP alumni. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA

Deadlock

Air negotiations with the United Arab Emirates, much anticipated being the first air talks under President Duterte, ended in a rather anticlimactic note. As the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) had announced, discussions closed in a deadlock, halting the addition of new flight frequencies between the Philippines and the UAE.

The CAB said talks stalled on certain details, but we heard a major part of it was the request by UAE carriers for additional flights to Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the country’s busiest air gateway. This proved a sticking point even as UAE carriers, which include Dubai’s Emirates and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways, committed to start operations at the Davao International Airport.

Recall that domestic airlines are generally opposed to the government allowing more Manila flights to carriers from the gulf, which are state-owned and alleged to receive heavy subsidies from their home governments—giving them quite an advantage versus their rivals elsewhere.

That was the argument against granting UAE airlines more Manila frequencies in the last talks in 2015. (They still got some after Emirates agreed to launch its Cebu-Clark-Dubai circular flights).

More recently, the topic has shifted to worsening air congestion in Naia.

Meanwhile, no new talks have been set by the CAB and no word on when that might be. Thus starts a period of waiting, which no doubt is welcomed by local carriers. —MIGUEL R. CAMUS

People pods

INSEAD MBA student Daniel Lopez Layug, a grandson of Lopez patriarch Oscar Lopez, teamed up with MBA classmates Panita Vongkusolkit and Willard Walker to create People Pods, a unique venture that seeks to deliver modular housing units in partnership with leading Asian manufacturing companies. The goal is to provide affordable, safe and clean housing options for factory workers throughout the region.

The People Pods housing concept won the Kellogg Real Estate Conference and Venture Competition 2017 held recently by Northwestern University-Kellogg School of Management. The team traveled from their INSEAD campus in France to Chicago and impressed the judges with their plan to provide a solution to the proliferation of substandard housing districts that are fraught with unsanitary conditions and lack of clean water across the region.

The team won $100,000 in combined cash and professional services for their idea, which they will apply to bring the concept to market. The team intends to implement its first People Pod community in collaboration with Mitr Phol Sugar Corp. in northwest Thailand.

Preliminary competition rounds were judged by leading real estate executives and four finalists were selected, with teams from Oxford, Columbia, Cornell and INSEAD presenting during a winner-take-all round before an audience of more than 200 real estate professionals and students. Judges based their decisions on a variety of criteria, including quality of the presentation, feasibility and the merits of the written plan.

The venture competition was judged by Frank Cohen, senior managing director of Blackstone’s real estate group; Randy Rowe, chair and founder of Green Courte Partners, and Laurie Smith, chief investment officer and portfolio manager at Blue Vista Capital Management.

This fourth-generation Lopez scion, who is making waves in MBA school, is someone to watch in the future, especially if and when his team brings the People Pods concept to town. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA