BIZ BUZZ: Doing the right thing

While the country’s business community mourned the passing of former President Benigno Aquino III, few businesses actually dared to put out messages of condolences and support for the bereaved family.

And practically no big business leader was seen at the short one-day wake at the Ateneo de Manila University, partly because of the ongoing pandemic that demands people putting health protocols ahead of other concerns. But also possibly because many leaders of big business are conscious not to offend the current dispensation by appearing to extend sympathies to the camp of political rivals.

Except one, that is.

We’re talking about San Miguel Corp. president Ramon Ang who “did the right thing” and showed up at the funeral mass at the Church of the Gesu in Loyola Heights to condole with the Aquino family and pay his respects to the late President.

That brave and magnanimous gesture took some observers by surprise, given that many felt that San Miguel never received much love from the previous administration despite the substantial financial support given by the late Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. to his nephew in the 2010 elections.

In fact, most of San Miguel’s big ticket projects during the previous administration faced one roadblock after another, courtesy of Cabinet secretaries who, for one reason or another, withheld their approvals and dragged their feet on policies needing their asset.

And what frustrated Ang privately—though he never complained about it—was that P-Noy wouldn’t even lift a finger to tell his Cabinet members to move faster.

And to think, Biz Buzz learned, that when Ang called on P-Noy just after the latter won the elections, the president-elect supposedly gave him a blank piece of bond paper and asked Ang to list down what he wanted or whom he wanted appointed to key Cabinet positions.

Ang supposedly return the paper to P-Noy unfilled, saying “All I want is a level playing field, Mr. President.”

Talk about doing the right thing when P-Noy was alive and doing the right thing after he passed, huh?

—Daxim L. Lucas

Gravitas in a banking textbook

When one has over three decades of banking experience—much of it at the pinnacle of the local industry—it is easy to just sit back and watch the current crop of bankers run around in panic while dealing with the current crisis.

But with many young bankers and students of banking nowadays having their very first face-to-face close up look at a real crisis, industry veteran Deogracias Vistan thought he shouldn’t just sit idly by and leave the current generation to their ways.

So last year, while everyone was in lockdown, Vistan—who was head of the Bankers Association of the Philippines at the height of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis—decided to write a textbook for university and graduate school students taking up banking courses to give them a better perspective into the industry.

More importantly, Vistan also wanted to help strengthen their youthful resolve in the face of seemingly world-ending financial storms like the current pandemic.

The product was a 220-page textbook “that reflects a banker’s perspective on banking—as a profession, and industry, and as a business.” Interestingly, while it’s meant to be a textbook, it also reads like a chronicle of Philippine banking’s evolution over the years. What it only glosses over, however, is just who Vistan was at the peak of his career: one of the most influential bankers in the country, having started his journey in Citibank, after which he became president of Solidbank Corp. (which has since been bought out by the Metrobank Group), the Land Bank of the Philippines and Equitable PCI Bank (before it was acquired by BDO Unibank).

Vistan—who went to De La Salle University and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania—also served as vice chair or Metrobank and chair of the United Coconut Planters Bank.Clearly, the man knows whence he speaks (or writes) and the textbook reflects this gravitas.

—Daxim L. Lucas

Best CFO

David Nicol, chief strategy officer of newly listed Monde Nissin Corp., has been cited as “top industrials chief financial officer (CFO)”—not just in the Philippines but in all of Asia (excluding China)—during his term as CFO of infrastructure holding firm Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC). This was based on the latest annual survey conducted by international finance publication Institutional Investor.

Nicol was recognized for helping steer the diversified business of MPIC as an executive vice president, a director and CFO.

“It’s wonderful to receive recognition from such a professional group and it’s really a testament to the fabulous team effort of the people I was working with at MPIC at that time. Their investor relations head, Kris Aldover (who also polled #1 in the survey) is incredibly talented. The wider more pleasing point is also the recognition for a Philippine corporate,” Nicol said.

Even before Institutional Investor completed the survey, Nicol had been busy working on the record-breaking P48.6 billion initial public offering of Monde Nissin, the local company behind Lucky Me! instant noodles, SkyFlakes, Fita and M.Y. San Grahams, as well as UK-based meat alternative player Quorn.

From its listing price of P13.50 per share on June 1, Monde Nissin is now trading at P16.04 per share, based on yesterday’s closing, giving it a market capitalization of about P280 billion. Before this IPO, Nicol had been involved in other big-ticket corporate deals in the Philippines, including GT Capital’s P22 billion investment in MPIC in 2016

—Doris Dumlao-Abadilla INQ

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