Buying with no back-up papers

These are indeed exciting times for San Miguel Corp. chairman and chief executive officer Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. Here are some reasons:

• The company gets back the use of the Magnolia brand name for ice cream by the end of the year.

• The company is expected to develop and launch soon another light beer product, this time one not so closely associated with the anchor brand, San Miguel Pale Pilsen, that Internal Revenue Commissioner Guillermo Parayno Jr. will consider it a variant and slap it with an additional P10 per bottle in excise tax. Because a variant rides on the goodwill of an existing brand, it is normally taxed a higher rate and is, therefore, also priced higher than the existing product.

• Subsidiary Ginebra San Miguel, Inc. is gearing up towards a long court battle with Tanduay Distillers on whether the word "ginebra" is a generic term for gin in Spanish and could, therefore, be used by anybody or a Ginebra San Miguel trademark registered with the Intellectual Property Office. At the end of the day, the battle is over market share. Ginebra is the dominant player in the billion-peso gin market, which includes largely small players such as Distilleria Limtuaco’s Ginebra Pinoy. In the hard liquor market, gin is the drink to get drunk on in Luzon while rum is its equivalent in the Visayas and Mindanao.

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With president Edgardo del Fonso still recovering from a bypass, the mouthpiece of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. has either been vice-president Froilan Tampinco or Energy Secretary Vicente Perez Jr.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to know who’s the go-to person of Messrs. Tampinco and Perez.

For example, when Vince Perez announced that bidding for the $500 million worth of gencos or generation companies will start immediately (ahead of the sale of the National Transmission Co. concession, which has had two failed biddings), nobody at PSALM seems to know where the necessary information memos could be purchased (although everybody was sure of the price – the standard price of $500).

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Did you know 1: Banco de Oro Universal Bank president and chief executive officer Nestor Tan must run a tight ship.

BDO currently has the lowest non-performing assets in the banking industry, taking away the bragging rights of Asia United Bank president Abraham Co. AUB ranks second behind BDO.

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Did you know 2: There’s talk that a chief executive officer within the Ayala Group will ask for an extension when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 60 late this year.

Then again, the CEO can always stay on while the group searches high and low for his replacement.

And after the successor is found, the CEO can always be persuaded to stay on some more to provide, uh, institutional continuity.