Megaworld starts Fairmont revamp

Publicly listed property firm Megaworld Corp. has asserted its control over the similarly listed but more controversial gaming and property company Fairmont Holdings Inc. (formerly BW Resources Corp.) as it orchestrated a major facelift in the latter’s 11-man board of directors.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Megaworld corporate information officer Francisco Canuto said the company would "undertake the reorganization of Fairmont as the first of a series of steps aimed laying the groundwork for the strengthening of Fairmont’s fundamentals and the enhancement of its shareholder value."

Fairmont Holdings is the new corporate name of BW Resources Corp. which prominently figured in a stock market trading scandal in 1999. The case is now lodged at the Department of Justice where several defendants that include Dante Tan, a close associate of former President Estrada and BW president Eduardo Lim Jr., still face criminal raps.

Canuto said in a board meeting last Friday, Megaworld appointed four more nominees to Fairmont’s board of directors led by its new president, Ferdinand Masi, who will hold the same post for both companies.

Megaworld is the biggest investor group in Fairmont with 72.12 percent of total outstanding stock while Tan is the single largest individual owner in the firm with around 12 percent equity. The rest of the major stockholdings are farmed out to foreign investor groups like the Savoy Group and Macau’s gaming king Stanley Ho.

Megaworld, which is into high-end property development for residential communities, commercial buildings and industrial park, took a majority stake in then BW via a share-for-property swap involving the joint development of the Sheraton Marina Complex in Roxas Boulevard.

However, the entry of Stanley Ho, along with expected fold-in of Dante Tan’s online bingo franchise into the company provided the main catalysts for BW stocks, propelling its price to zoom 10 times over in just six months.

Canuto said from just two nominees, Megaworld appointed four more directors in BW, namely: Ferdinand Masi, Enrique Soriano III, Garry de Guzman and Josephine Benitez-Ng. They join incumbent directors Gerardo Garcia and Annie Reyes. – Conrado Diaz