Bidding for EIB assets fails

The bidding Thursday for the assets and liabilities of Export and Industry Bank (EIB) was declared a failure with no bids submitted.

Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp., which is overseeing EIB’s rehabilitation, said it had received from the Makati City Regional Trial Court a copy of an order stopping the rehabilitation proceedings for the bank.

EIB’s rehabilitation is mapped out in two tranches.  Tranche 1 will be for the sale of the bank’s assets and transfer of its liabilities to the buyer. This was the object of Thursday’s bidding.

Tranche 2 will be for the disposition of the commercial bank license of EIB, the bidding date for which is supposed to be announced later.

As soon as the deadline for the submission of bids lapsed at 1 p.m., PDIC vice president Nancy S. Samson pointed out that the drop boxes that were supposed to contain the bid documents were empty—save for a letter size envelope which contained the secret floor price.

Following the declaration of bidding failure, PDIC executive vice president Cristina Q. Orbeta said the state insurer received in the afternoon of Oct. 17 a copy of the 72-hour TRO from Branch No. 139 of the Makati RTC.

The order “enjoin(s) the sale of the assets, branches and commercial bank license of the closed EIB,” Orbeta said, quoting pertinent parts of the order.

The Makati RTC issued the order in answer to a petition from Forum Holdings Corp., East Asia Oil Co. Inc., Pacific Rehouse Corp., Pacific Concorde Corp. and Mizpah Holdings—which together posted an injunctive bond of P772,320.

Also, the TRO directs PDIC, EIB and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to file with the court within 15 days their answer to the complaint.

Orbeta said the PDIC would file within the day an urgent motion to dissolve and/or lift the TRO, as well as its opposition to the petitioners’ application for preliminary injunction.

“We will argue that the RTC had no jurisdiction to issue the TRO and preliminary injunction and that the court was patently in violation of the Rules of Court and jurisprudence,” she said.

Orbeta added that the plaintiffs “have no clear and unmistakable right over EIB’s assets, branches and commercial bank license to be entitled to injunctive relief and that there was no extreme urgency in the ex parte issuance of the TRO.”

She also said that after a successful bidding for the rehabilitation of EIB, consents of stockholders, depositors and creditors have to be obtained—for which PDIC had earlier set a deadline of Nov. 9.