Banking’s best treasury man

Bank notes 1: That former Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. treasury head Jaime Panganiban is still in town – and not in London, where he could finally fix some of the, uhm, loopholes in his education – has been spawning talk that he might soon get out of retirement, with the right job offer, of course. Mr. Panganiban is considered by some as the best living treasury man in the banking industry.

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Bank notes 2: There’s talk that this migrating man, whose management contract with his current employer will not be renewed next month, is not only looking at Canada but the Philippines as well for business opportunities.

One local opportunity will highly depend on this man’s connections with a very sick man.

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Bank notes 3: The latest board nominee of President Macapagal-Arroyo to the Development Bank of the Philippines is Joseph Pangilinan, brother of Sen. Francis Pangilinan and a member of the senior management team of the family business, a furniture exporting company called ManilaPearl Corp.

Mr. Pangilinan replaced Jaime dela Rosa.

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Bank notes 4: This is probably splitting hairs but Bank of the Philippine Islands headed by outgoing president Xavier Loinaz was ahead of United Coconut Planters Bank is successfully bidding out their bad eggs.

In the case of BPI, what was bid out were the non-performing loans. BPI already got the down payment.

In the case of UCPB, which is headed by Jose Querubin, what was bid out were real and other acquired properties or ROPOAs. UCPB will hopefully get its 20-percent down payment by end-October.

As everybody knows, NPLs plus ROPOAs add up to total non-performing assets.

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Since last Thursday, homeowners of a residential condominium project called Westmont Village in Parañaque have been without light and water. You see, Manila Electric Co. has disconnected that particular line because of accumulated unpaid bills.

What’s painful is that homeowners have been dutifully paying their bills to the homeowners association currently headed by Efren Rodriguez, a nominee of the developer, EBEdev, Inc..

In turn, the developer is a wholly owned subsidiary of publicly-listed company, Zipporah Realty Holdings, which includes among its incorporators Philippine Ambassador to the United Kingdom Edgardo Espiritu and Sta. Lucia Realty majority owner Exequiel Robles.

Meralco is not the only creditor that the association has not been paying.

There’s also the city government of Parañaque, which has refused to accept the real estate tax payments of homeowners because, according to the city treasurer’s records, EBEdev has yet to settle back taxes of more than P22 million.