A non-member of the ‘republic’

Bank notes 1: There is talk this bank’s chief operating officer has already tendered his resignation ahead of the completion next month of his three-year management contract.

The COO, who is good enough to be chief executive officer, has tried to get along with his major stockholder (represented in the board by his daughter) while trying to implement a five-year program that would make the bank more competitive.

Unfortunately, he is not considered part of the daughter’s informal club of bank officers, which is cattily described by everybody in the bank as the daughter’s "republic".

From within, the list of possible contenders for COO includes a former president (who had problems controlling a senior officer during his watch because unquestionable trust and confidence was developed during, uh, long lunch breaks) and a current executive vice-president (who remains terminally optimistic that his promotion will come, sooner than later).

From the outside, the list is significantly shorter because a winner of a banker will have to think twice of his/her track record before joining the bank.

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Bank notes 2: Philippine National Bank first senior vice-president Michael de Jesus – who is teased no end about his current love life by senior management led by president and chief executive officer Lorenzo Tan is reviving the Chinese desk in corporate banking.

The idea here is to meet the special needs of Chinese-Filipino entrepreneurs such as the submission of less documents.

The group of Mike de Jesus handles loan applications from P1 million to P1 billion.

Despite increasing its lending rate from a low of 10 percent to the industry norm of 15 percent, the bank has shown an increase in its number of corporate banking clients.

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Bank notes 3: Probably because the guys that run the show are kind of old – majority stockholder Lucio Tan is already the youngest in the group – wearing trousers and clingy tops are discouraged among female employees of Allied Banking Corp.

The hard-headed ones get reprimanding memos from HRD.

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Bank notes 4: Philippine Savings Bank is actively hiring branch personnel to man the 18 branches purchased from sister company, Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co.

Metrobank sold branches in areas where it had two or three competing against each other for the same market. The redundancy was the result of the acquisition of Solid Bank Corp. and Global Business Bank.

PSBank president and chief executive officer Pascual Garcia III has targeted two areas to drive the business. Consumer loans – with lots of inputs from vice-chairman Arthur Ty – is one. The other is the small-and medium-sized enterprise.