Sneaky play

Oh dear. The, uh, pressures of the job is said to have made Securities and Exchange Commissioner Jesus Martinez physically ill early in the week.

Not to worry. Like his close friend, Jesus is Lord founder Ed Villanueva, Jess Martinez believes in divine intervention.

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Even though it holds the Philippine TV rights for the National Basketball Association until 2006, Solar Entertainment chairman Wilson Tieng and president William Tieng are already negotiating for the next multi-year contract.

As part of the current deal, Solar has the exclusive right to show the coming NBA conference play-offs and the finals in the country. That means the signals of other cable stations showing those NBA games will be blocked.

Oh yes, the likelihood of the LA Lakers cheerleaders coming over after the finals (which Phil Jackson and his boys will probably win again) is getting smaller and smaller.

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Right now, even knowing 3M business unit manager Bernard Brown isn’t going to get you a box of N95 type respiratory masks (the ones used by health workers to minimize the catching of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Each box has 10 masks, good for a family and their household help.

Here’s 3M’s problem. The country only accounts for five percent of the total business in Asia. And part of that five-percent retail allocation has already been diverted to areas harder-hit by SARS.

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Bank notes 1: Citibank’s consumer banking business, which is headed by Nina Aguas, is aggressively pushing an instant loan product for existing cardholders. The loan amount of between P70,000 and P1 million carries a monthly interest of 1.5 percent plus a VCD player thrown in just for signing up.

Here’s the catch though. You lock yourself in on a 12- or 24-month payment scheme. (There’s no way a sneaky person can get the free VCD player by borrowing and then repaying Citi the principal plus interest the very next month.)

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Bank notes 2: Never, never bet during a billiards game with East-West Banking Corp. president and chief executive officer Elrey Ramos.

This is a guy who got his allowance during college by playing the game made popular by Efren Reyes.

And unlike sports like basketball, where players (including trey-shooter Development Bank of the Philippines president and chief executive officer Simon Paterno) get slower as they get older, billiard players like Mr. Ramos only get better.