A favorite of headhunters

Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho probably didn’t know there were some very important investors who wanted to meet him.

Either that or Lito Camacho didn’t know how important these investors were and how much money they could bring into the country, plus how many jobs could be created by such investments.

At any rate, the ambassador who accompanied these investors lost a lot of face when they were entertained at the Department of Finance by an assistant secretary.

For some reason or another, there were no undersecretaries available.

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Bank notes 1: Those coffee shops must be extremely profitable Consider the one put up by United Coconut Planters Bank (the one with green umbrellas in front of the head office), initially for those who needed a quick nicotine fix but had vertigo doing it outside the fire exit.

The bank was able to quickly raise P700,000 from the sale of coffee under those umbrellas. The money went to putting up a gym for the bank’s employees.

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Bank notes 2: Now that Enrico Cruz has been promoted to head Deutsche Bank’s Philippine operations, headhunters now have to find another favorite to their short list of possible president/chief executive officer.

In the past three years, Mr. Cruz has been contacted for possible openings at the top in local banks and he had dutifully gone to those interviews.

Nothing came out of those talks. Either Mr. Cruz wasn’t sold on the offer to accept a pay cut or the local banks couldn’t afford to match or even up Mr. Cruz’s compensation package (which includes commissions) at Deutsche.

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Letter 1: The SM Group of Companies writes that the Carol Sy representing the small stockholders in the PEA-Amari deal is the namesake of one of the daughters-in-law of Henry Sy Sr. Mr. Sy’s son, Hans Sy, is married to Carol Tancuan Sy.

The confusion here arises from two things. One, Carol Sy is a common name. Two, Mr. Sy’s son-in-law, the late Louis Coson, used to be associated with Amari in the early stages but had since withdrawn from the group.

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Letter 2: Stradcom Corp. chief legal and corporate affairs officer Eric Gene Pilapil writes: "Stradcom, project proponent of the Land Transportation Office-Information Technology project, is not a private emission testing center.

"As the LTO-IT project proponent, Stradcom’s participation in the emission testing program of the government is dedicated to providing the mandatory online and real time verification of emission test results required by the LTO. Through Stradcom’s authentication facility that is integrated with the Motor Vehicle Registration System of the LTO-IT project, the LTO evaluators can immediately verify the authentication of the certificates of emission compliance issued by DTI-accredited and DoTC/LTO-authorized PETCS, thereby facilitating the renewal processing of motor vehicles registration and ensuring that the motor vehicle being registered has indeed passed the smoke emission test."

My reply: Cut of the legalese, Stradcom will decide whether the CECs issued by private emission testing centers are, uh, authentic. If CECs issued by any one of about 184 PETCs, which have already met the criteria set by the Department of Trade and Industry, don’t get Stradcom’s nod, then the owner of the vehicle being registered with the LTO would have to get another CEC, would he?