Gov’t eyes ‘call’ option on PNB shares held by Tan

After asking Lucio Tan to agree to a "put" option that will require him to buy the government’s shares in Philippine National Bank two years from now, Finance Secretary Jose T. Pardo is now studying a "call" option that will give the Philippine government the right to buy back two years from now the new share which the government did not subscribe to during the recently concluded PNB stock rights offering.

Under that rights offering, the government’s 30.4 percent stake in PNB was reduced to about 16 percent as Tan picked up the shares.

Pardo said government wants to impose the so-called "put and call" option following Tan’s decision to back out of his earlier bid to buy the government’s 30.4 percent stake. He said the "put and call" option is a compromise for which the government will agree not to sue Tan for backing out of the sale agreement.

Sources said, Tan had agreed to the "put" option and had expressed willingness to buy the 30.4 percent stake two years from now if government will not be able to sell it.

Government is hoping that PNB will be able to turn around and become profitable two years from now.

Under the put option, Tan will buy the government’s 30.4-percent stake at P100 per plus carrying cost.

In the call option, government will be able to buy back from Tan its allocation during the PNB stock rights offering at P60 per share plus carrying cost. With this option, the government is hoping that it will be able to buy the shares at a cheap price then immediately turn around and sell the shares at a profit.

Sources said the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have expressed no objection to such a put and call option.

Meanwhile, government is asking the World Bank to finally release the second tranche of the Bank Sector Reform Loan (BSLR) now that the government has complied with the conditionality on the privatization and rehabilitation of the PNB.

The second tranche of $100 million has a counterpart funding from the Japan Bank of International Cooperation of $100 million and release by the WB would trigger the release of JBOC’s counterpart .