Biz Buzz: Air space battle royale

The tug-of-war between the state-owned Home Guaranty Corp. and Philippine National Railways over air rights through a 14-kilometer stretch from Buendia in Makati City to Samson Road in Caloocan City is seen becoming a proxy of the upcoming 2016 presidential contest between Jejomar Binay and Mar Roxas, currently the czars of housing and transportation, respectively.

Our sources said all hell broke loose in a prebidding confidence conducted by HGC last week for the auction of the much-coveted air space above the PNR’s railway, which is crucial to the North-South Luzon Expressway connector road alignment proposed by businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan-led Metro Pacific Investments Corp. The air rights were acquired by HGC from PNR long ago when it guaranteed the bonds issued for “home along the riles” or housing projects for informal settlers.

Apart from MPIC, which will naturally fight tooth-and-nail for the air rights, construction firm FF Cruz & Co., MTD Malaysia and three law offices (representing undisclosed investors) have also shown interest to bid for the air rights, our sources said. But during the same prebidding conference, the PNR sent a feisty lawyer to protest HGC’s plan to auction the air rights. While HGC wanted to cash in from these air rights as part of the cleaning of its books, PNR wanted to buy back the air rights for itself but was yet unclear yet on how it could pay for it, the sources said. More than the moolah consideration, some naughty business observers theorized that this was just a manifestation of a power struggle between the Binay-Mar camps.

In the meantime, the buying of bid documents has been extended to April 27 as more bidders are expected to vie for the air rights, which have suddenly become a precious commodity after several failed biddings in the past.—Doris C. Dumlao

Foreign equity discussions

The Supreme Court is set to hold Tuesday (April 17) in Baguio City an oral argument on several petitions that seek to overturn its earlier decision on the issue of foreign equity in public utilities firm (a.k.a the game-changing Wilson Gamboa case on Philippine Long Distance Telephone). To recall, the high tribunal voted 10-3 in June 26 last year to exclude nonvoting preferred shares in the computation of equity for purposes of compliance with the 40-percent foreign ownership limit in certain industries.

Because petitioner Gamboa passed away last year, Lauro, one of the sons, is taking over the case but people close to the late lawyer are concerned that conducting the oral arguments in Baguio might be a ploy to effectively limit media coverage or publicity on this case. They claim that some influential people, after all, are working to overturn the decision. A source from the high court, on the other hand, said the three-week Baguio sessions started last April 10 and it might just be a coincidence that this item was in the agenda for the period.—Doris C. Dumlao

MSCI guessing game

With the next rebalancing of the influential MSCI index by Morgan Stanley Capital International expected in end-May, the stock market has started the guessing game on which Philippine companies may be included and henceforth appear in the radar screens of big institutional investors. Two of the top bets for the May review are DMCI Holdings and Philex Mining, stock pundits say.

JG Summit, which has seen a sharp rally in the past two days, is also seen as a candidate although some analysts say this may happen this November rather than next month.

The conglomerate founded by industrialist John Gokongwei has also recently benefited from a very upbeat research by CLSA Asia-Pacific, which initiated coverage on JG Summit with a “buy” recommendation and a 12-month price target of P43.—Doris C. Dumlao

Averse to Twitter

In a recent meeting with bloggers to promote his start-up technopreneur incubation project “IdeaSpace,” some bloggers were interested to find out how “in” PLDT chair Manuel V. Pangilinan was in the social networking space. He was asked whether he was into micro-blogging site Twitter.  MVP said he was not. “Baka ma-Sharon Cuneta pa ako,” he said. MVP was of course referring to the Megastar’s recent bout with anonymous “cyber-bullies.”—Doris C. Dumlao

CAAP failure

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) may not have been entirely at fault for failing the recent Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) technical assessment. The FAA left the country with an additional 20 areas of concern for the CAAP to address, adding to the previous two that have proven too much for the agency to handle for the past year. This was a setback to the administration’s goal of regaining the “Category 1” status the country lost during the Arroyo years.

But one government aviation sector regulator said the FAA might have been a bit “unreasonable.” “They never raised those concerns to us before, so the CAAP was surprised to find that they wanted those addressed as well,” the Biz Buzz source said.

So what did Manuel “Mar” Roxas II have to say about our source’s analysis? The transportation secretary, of course, has been open about his disappointment over the CAAP failing the technical assessment. In a recent interview, Roxas expressed his dismay at what he perceived as someone trying to cover his “behind.”

“The issues raised were basic international aviation standards,” Roxas said. Any self-respecting agency, he said, should have followed these, even if not told to. “Those are the standards. We chose not to follow them and this is the consequence,” Roxas said.—Paolo Montecillo

Get business alerts and a preview of Biz Buzz the evening before it comes out. Text ON INQ BUSINESS to 4467 (P2.50/alert).