Gov't won't announce floor price for PNB shares

The government will not announce a floor price for the 76 percent stake in Philippine National Bank that will be sold on or before May 15 this year.

Instead, Finance Secretary Jose T. Pardo said the government will "seal" the floor price and give it to a three-man committee that will be tasked to conduct the bidding and open the sealed bids.

Pardo said the P160 per share that taipan Lucio Tan wants is not automatically the floor price that government will set for the bidding. The government and Tan, Pardo said, will have to agree on a floor price and then seal it in an envelope.

The government and Tan will have to meet and make a decision that will also try to incorporate the audit findings of SGV and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Pardo said the SGV audit of PNB is expected this month.

The BSP is also conducting its own audit of PNB and its findings, Pardo said, could be incorporated into the SGV audit.

The Committee on Privatization approved last Friday the privatization of PNB. The COP, Pardo reported, discussed the bidding process for PNB. Government, Pardo said, is hoping that the first bidding will be successful and that there will be full agreement on the price.

However, while the government is hopeful that there will only be one bidding, it has not ruled out a proposal from Tan that his earlier deal regarding the PNB shares once-owned by government could still be rescinded.

The government wants to keep its options open just in case Tan is not amenable to a lower floor price.

Tan has agreed to combine his 46 percent stake in PNB with that of the government's 30 percent to make the privatization more attractive.

However, Tan wants a minimum price of at least P160 per share based on the price he had acquired some of his shares in PNB from the PNB-Retirement Fund Inc.

Tan, in a letter to Pardo, had proposed that if the block sale does not push through, government could rescind his deal with PNB-RFI and get back their shares.

Government had not subscribed to the shares in September last year and assigned its subscription rights to the PNB-RFI which "sold" its right to Tan. -