Biz Buzz: First in line

Making an underhanded pitch for another’s business—or “panunulot” in the vernacular— isn’t his deal-making style, says San Miguel Corp. president

Ramon S. Ang, aka “RSA,” who was a bit irked at insinuations that he’s a Johnny-Come-Lately in the reported bidding war for Line 3 of the Metro Rail Transit.

He recalled that Metro Manila’s busiest elevated railway was on SMC’s radar screen as early as 2008, when he was invited by Fil-Estate chief

Bob Sobrepeña to buy out the latter’s interest in Metro Railway Transit Corp.

“We hired a law firm to do a due-diligence but their finding is that his stake doesn’t have any value as economic rights were all going to the foreign banks,” RSA told Biz Buzz. (That 29-percent stake was eventually assigned by the Fil-Estate group in 2010 to the Metro Pacific group led by Manuel V. Pangilinan.)

While RSA did not want the Fil-Estate stake, he said he had offered to buy the debt paper of MRT 3 held by the creditors, but backed off upon learning that the government would like to come into the picture. He said then Finance Secretary Gary Teves had told him to let the government do it “para sa bayan” (for the country). Thus, state-owned banks DBP and Landbank eventually took over MRT 3.

And when the Department of Transportation and Communications planned to bid out the operations and management (O&M) contract for MRT 3 in 2011, he said SMC was invited as well. When asked by the DoTC whether it could operate the railway at minimal cost to the government, he said SMC conducted a study and found it feasible. The bidding, however, did not push through.

“What I’m saying is, we were way ahead,” RSA says, noting that whether it’s Meralco, Skyway, SLEx or Star tollroads, SMC was originally there before anybody else.

Just because he did not publicly talk about it first did not mean he was not there first.—Doris C. Dumlao

Meanwhile…

RSA shrugged off rumors that he was looking at dormant Asia Amalgamated Holdings Corp. (AAA) as a backdoor listing ticket for the San Miguel group’s power unit SMC Global Power Holdings, which had deferred an $850-million initial public offering (IPO) filed last year.

There has been a sharp spike in AAA’s share price since November on rumors that this or that investor was in talks to take over the company, including SMC recently. But RSA stressed “SMC Power will do an IPO only.”

With the local equities market booming since the start of the year, the appetite for IPOs will greatly improve, too.—Doris C. Dumlao

Rogue trader with management’s blessings?

The supposed rogue trader who was accused by RCBC Securities of running off with a huge sum of clients’ money seems to be ready to turn the tables on her accuser.

According to our source, the brokerage firm’s former “rainmaker”—Mary Grace Valbuena—is all set to spill the beans on her former superiors, including what her camp claims was the sanctioned use of a scheme where all clients’ stock transactions were coursed through a single trading account that was managed solely at her discretion.

Our source added that the operation was running for several years already and was supposedly approved and encouraged by Valbuena’s superiors since the arrangement was “mutually beneficial.”

“Her activities as a stockbroker practically paid for all the salaries of the brokerage firm’s employees,” the source said, who added that Valbuena was ready to come out with documentary evidence to prove her claims. “It goes all the way to the top.”

So will the issue be settled quietly or will we see more skeletons coming out of the brokerage firm’s closet? Abangan.—Daxim L. Lucas

EastWest Bank IPO

When the Filinvest group disclosed a capital increase for East West Bank (to P20 billion from around P10 billion at present) last week, it sounded pretty much like the Gotianiuns’ banking unit was ready to go public, not only to take advantage of the bullish stock market but to comply with one key condition set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for it to expand into universal banking.

“We’re studying … studying,” East West bank chair Jonathan Gotianun said, when we bumped into him during the Bangko Sentral’s annual cocktail reception for bankers Friday night.

So we sniffed around further and found out that East West is getting ready to foray into the capital market and has indeed mandated foreign banks Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan to arrange a potential public offering with a size of about $140-$150 million.

Note that there has been a dearth of banking IPOs in the local stock market for a very long time. The last bank to debut on the Philippine Stock Exchange was International Exchange Bank in 2004 (but already delisted after it was acquired by Union Bank in 2006) and before that, Banco de Oro Unibank in 2002. Also note that the president of East West, Tony Moncupa, was no stranger to the last banking IPO seen by the market as he was then treasurer of iBank.—Doris C. Dumlao

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