A Buddha for good luck

Bank notes 1: Supposedly, President Macapagal-Arroyo was irked that Bangko Sentral Governor Rafael Buenaventura was nowhere within photo-taking distance to show his support when she delivered her State of the Nation address.

Then again, Paeng Buenaventura doesn’t attend that kind of stuff because the Bangko Sentral operates independently of the Executive branch of government. (That’s one of the reasons why the governor’s six-year term ends in mid-2005, one year after the 2004 presidential election).

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Bank notes 2: There’s a relatively large (sorry, not golden) Buddha at the foyer of the Asia United Bank head office.

The statue – the idea of majority owner Jacinto Ng — has brought good luck to the bank’s management team headed by president Abraham Co, who has had to deal with one of the lowest non-performing loan portfolios in the industry.

To hear some bank clients talk, the good luck has extended to them as well.

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Bank notes 3: Instead of the usual economic briefing, HSBC has come up with a more interesting excuse for its well-heeled clients these are individuals who have at least P3 million being managed by the bank and are, therefore, members of the bank’s worldwide Premier Club to visit the branch more often.

Last Monday, for example, the Greenhills branch of HSBC Savings Bank hosted an ikehana session for Premier clients and raffled off three of the flower arrangements made by Margarita Perez, the wife of former PCISBank executive vice-president and now independent financial consultant Jose Perez, and by Vicky Cheng.

Next in the lifestyle series for the Greenhills branch headed by Nancy Savaris (with lots of help from Premier manager Cris Chanyungco) is liposuction for celebrities expert, Vicky Belo.

Of HSBC Savings’ 16 outlets, only eight have enough space for wealth management clients.

In the Philippine set-up, Premier falls under senior vice-president for branches Sebastian Arcuri, who, in turn, reports to personal financial services head and concurrent deputy chief executive officer Martin Cook.

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It looks like the Philippine Stock Exchange board chaired by Alicia Morales-Arroyo had gotten an extension on the Aug. 15 deadline for the submission of its listing plans to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Basically, the PSE proposal, which SEC chairman Lilia Bautista will get by Aug. 31, calls for a technical listing of PSE shares sort of a promise to undertake the listing (as soon as market conditions improves) as compliance to the SEC order.

The listing of PSE shares creates an interesting situation in the future. To protect its investors, someone must, in theory, monitor the PSE in the same way that the PSE tries to protect investors of all publicly-listed company. That protector of PSE investors will most likely be the SEC.

Right now, the PSE has been authorized by the SEC to function as a self-regulatory organization.