Coyiuto tops PSE elections

Member-brokers of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) elected yesterday the new set of directors for 2005-2006 but the new board failed to meet and elect among themselves the bourse’s new officers due to a delay in vote processing.

Leading the votes among the broker-candidates was Robert Coyiuto Jr., the first president of the unified exchange in 1992 and its chairman in 1994.

PSE chairperson Alicia Arroyo and another former chairperson Vivian Yuchengco were also both elected. The two are reportedly battling it out again for the top post as Coyiuto has declined to enter the fray.

The other brokers who won in yesterday’s annual stockholders meeting are William Ang, Conrado Bate, Alejandro Yu and Francisco Villaroman.

Under the Securities Regulation Code, the PSE board should be controlled by a majority of non-brokers with eight seats, leaving only seven slots for the brokers.

The PSE shareholders also voted lawyer Francis Lim as president for another year. He will be joined in the board by other non-brokers Asian Alliance Investment Corp. president Roberto Atendido (representing other market participants), GSIS chairman Bernardino Abes (representing investors), PLDT treasurer Annabelle Chua and San Miguel Corp. financial analyst Frederick de Vera (representing issuer companies), and independent directors Jose Luis Javier, Peter Favila and Cornelio Peralta.

Six candidates earlier withdrew from the race for unspecified reasons, with two of them backing out just hours before the start of the stockholders meeting.

As a result, counting for the votes were delayed yesterday, forcing a number of elected directors to leave early to attend to some other commitments. Thus, the board meeting has to be rescheduled today to pave the way for the election of the new officers.

Those who earlier withdrew were brokers Filomeno Francisco, Paul Wee and Lorenzo Tan, along with independent candidate Wilfred Son Keng Po. Yuchengco’s daughter Margarita Locsin and Eddie Gobing also pulled out from the brokers’ list yesterday.