P5-M for a vice-president slot

There’s talk that the going price for vice-president at tomorrow’s election of officers of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. is P5 million while that of a director is P4 million.

It is the 39-man board which elects the six vice-presidents, the executive vice-president and president. Since they’re the only candidates for the job, Robin Sy will be voted in (the only surprise here being whether anybody would abstain) as president and Francis Chua will be elected EVP.

The federation’s national convention started yesterday and ends tomorrow.

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Is Lucio Tan mad at this guy? Judge for yourself.

The man borrowed money from the Xiamen branch of Allied Bank and for one reason or another, has been unable to keep up with the amortizations. The bank manager was about to foreclose on the property but, being a smart man, decided to first check with head office.

Mr. Tan gave the borrower another extension to pay his loan.

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Forget about having a pleasant drive to Subic. The national road from the viaduct onwards is being repaired. That means there’s only one lane going to and one lane coming from Subic.

By the way, SCAD Corp. – which has been put up to develop the two special economic zones of Clark and Subic – in an integrated manner is going through expected birth pains.

Most of the nasty talk comes from misunderstanding the relationship between the Bases Conversion Development Authority, which is headed by Rufo Colayco, and the Clark Development Corp., which is headed by Emmanuel Angeles. Basically, BCDA owns the former US air force base; CDC manages Clark for BCDA.

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Bank notes: 1: Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor (and officer-in-charge) Amanda Tetangco has his hands full, watching the peso closely but only as a weaker peso might impact on inflation. As everybody knows, the primary job of the Bangko Sentral is not to defend the peso but to provide price stability.

Watching the peso is not exactly new to Cy Tetangco, who – at one point in his career – headed the Bangko Sentral’s treasury operation.

Besides, he’s in daily contact with Governor Rafael Buenaventura, who is spending his one-month leave in the United States.

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Bank notes 2: Wednesday’s monthly board meeting of Chinatrust (Phils) Commercial Banking Corp. was pretty run of the mill. In short, it seems president Joey Bermudez isn’t looking at expanding his business by buying the branch network of another bank.

Instead, Mr. Bermudez continues to push for more consumer banking products. There’s the part two of its home loan program launched last year, where borrowers who transfer their housing loans to Chinatrust get a transfer bonus of P100,000.

(Word, is the bank has a preference for those who borrowed from Bank of the Philippine Islands, if only because BPI has a stringent credit process and Chinatrust need not worry about doing another CI).