Class of the titans

While some groups are calling for the conservation of another old building in the once swanky district in the City of Manila called Binondo, the biggest question in their campaign is this: Who really owns the building?

The five-story building is none other than the 100-year old El Hogar—meaning, literally, The Home—nestled at the corner of Juan Luna St. and Muelle de Industria, overlooking the Pasig River.

Earlier reports said the National Historical Commission of the Philippines, or the NHCP, which the law (RA 10069) in 2009 tasked to act as the “police” in preserving historical sites and heritage buildings in the country, already called on the “owner” to preserve El Hogar.

To do just that, the NHCP called for what the law prescribed as “adaptive reuse” for the building, meaning that the owner could convert the structure into a hotel, for instance, but the owner must also retain the architecture.

But word went around that the structure has been up for demolition, since the mysterious owner decided not to renew all the leases, although the building management could not give the tenants any reason for the nonrenewal.

There were rumors that the new owner of El Hogar was the Megaworld group of real estate titan Andrew Tan, who was just named by Forbes magazine as the third-richest man in the Philippines.

In the same Binondo area, Megaworld already launched a multibillion-peso “redevelopment” project, featuring high-end establishments (hotels, restaurants and boutiques) at the Plaza Cervantes, located at the west end of Escolta St.

It so happened that Megaworld already belonged to a different class of property companies, with its enviable track record in urban renewal with its various all-encompassing “township” projects such as those at Eastwood (Libis, Quezon City) and McKinley (Fort Bonifacio, Taguig).

And so, if Andrew Tan and his company really bought El Hogar, his group would likely want to build another high-rise condominium on the site, considering that, nearby, his boys already put up a 47-story residential condo called “Noble Place.”

Not so fast, Caiaphas, because according to some Megaworld insiders, Andrew Tan wanted to buy El Hogar precisely to preserve its architecture, and it was just that somebody else already beat him to it.

For his one-of-a-kind class act involving El Hogar, according to Megaworld insiders, Andrew Tan actually wanted the very same old structure to serve as the anchor in his gentrification plans for the entire Binondo business district, starting with Megaworld projects at Plaza Cervantes.

And so, since nobody is coming forward to claim ownership of the building, the question remains: Who actually owns it?

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What do you know, oregano – telecom giant PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company) succeeded in getting a court TRO, courtesy of the Court of Appeals, against the police of the very telecommunications industry, none other than the National Telecommunications Commission, or NTC.

It seemed that PLDT wanted the CA to stop the NTC from conducting hearings on the proposed rehabilitation of another telecommunications company, Bayantel of the Lopez group.

Since Bayantel has been bleeding, yet another telecommunications company, the Ayala group’s Globe Telecoms, came forward to help Bayantel in its rehabilitation.

The NTC naturally had to conduct hearings on the proposed Bayantel rehabilitation, which inspired PLDT to run to the courts to stop NTC, which the CA in turn granted with a 60-day TRO.

And what reasons under the heavens did PLDT give to the CA for PLDT to deserve the TRO? Well, from what I gathered, they were mainly PLDT objections to the NTC hearings regarding … well, “procedures.”

I am not kidding, because PLDT actually gave as reasons the, one, “defect in the verification and certification of non-forum shopping and publication requirement,” and two, “non-compliance with the Judicial Affidavit Rule and (c) the Amended Rehabilitation Plan and MRA were not appended to the application, as required by the NTC internal rules of procedure.”

Still, we could perhaps get an idea of the actual reason of PLDT in wanting to derail the Bayantel rehab with the help of Globe petition, when PLDT alleged that the rehab would violate RA No. 7925 (the telecoms law), because PLDT claimed the rehab would “result in the merger of the two telecommunications institutions.”

There—in other words— PLDT was afraid of competition.

From what I gathered, the rehabilitation court already approved the conversion of the debts of Bayantel to Globe into equity, which would represent some 57 percent of the Bayantel outstanding shares.

Now, the conversion could be crucial in the rehab plan of Bayantel, because its debts to Globe amount to almost 70 percent of all its liabilities.

Still, both Globe and Bayantel insisted that the conversion would not mean that the two companies would merge, as PLDT claimed in its court case, because Bayantel would still operate as a separate and distinct entity.

It seems that the shoe is on the other foot: PLDT at one time acquired another telecommunication firm, the Digitel-Sun combine, from the Gokongwei group, which at that time was a healthy business, making a lot of money and all from its 15 million or so subscribers.

In comparison, Bayantel has been bleeding for the past couple of decades already, which made it a distressed company, to the detriment of its 500,000 or so customers.

Let me see—PLDT objected to the Bayantel rehab, because PLDT suspected a “merger” in the making in the Bayantel deal with Globe, but it was really just fine and dandy when PLDT itself bought another profitable company—is that it?

Well, thanks to the anti-trust legislation in the United States, the US government in 1974 was finally able to dismantle the monopoly of telecommunications giant known as AT&T, which was broken up into seven different companies.

The main point in the AT&T story was that, as a giant monopoly, its dominance in the telecom industry was not conducive to fair competition, which was precisely the ultimate reason of PLDT in fighting the Bayantel rehab. You know—kill the competition!

As it stood, the Bayantel rehab plan would be good for the image of this country as well, because it would prevent a key industry player from defaulting on its debt of $420 million.

Of course it will certainly be good also for Bayantel’s half a million or so customers. But who actually cares about customers in the telecoms business?