Board games

Did you know 1: The first 15 days of a new Convergys Phils. employee is spent in training, for which he/she is paid the agreed upon salary instead of the usual industry practice of paying a training allowance.

Convergys Phils. is headed by Marife Zamora. Higher up, the head for global communications and culture training is another Filipina, Ma. Luisa Ros, who is based in Florida.

* * *

Did you know 2: RFM Corp. president and chief executive officer Jose Concepcion III is rebranding the Dairy Queen ice cream chain to Snow Storm, which sounds like a synonym of a newer but faster growing competitor.

* * *

Did you know 3: It was Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. chairman Manuel Pangilinan who pushed for the company’s investment in online gaming company, Level Up! (read: the company behind Ragnarok).

Through the years, PLDT has acquired a 50 percent stake in the company which investment banker Aloysius Colayco started with $20,000 – he put up about 20 percent of his own money and raised the cash from friends – and is now worth P2 billion.

As everybody knows, Nonoy Colayco is chairman of the Jardine Group in the Philippines, which includes the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

* * *

Did you know 4: Manila Electric Co. chairman Manuel Lopez resigned from the board of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. in part because there are issues that he needs to concentrate on in Meralco and in part because , well, there are already enough directors with the surname in the board.

Manolo Lopez’s siblings, Oscar Lopez and Presentacion Psinakis, are directors and so are his son, Manuel Lopez Jr., and his nephews, Eugenio Lopez III and Federico Lopez.

* * *

Did you know 5: Expect Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Fe Barin to be driven around town in a new CRV when she returns to the Philippines.

Oh yes, the four other commissioners will receive delivery of their own CRVs plus free gas, despite the reduction in the SEC workload now that corporate disputes have been fielded to special regional trial court judges.

* * *

Government Service and Insurance System president Winston Garcia is expected to nominate his number two man Reynaldo Palmiery, and retired justice Teodoro Regino to the board of Equitable PCI Bank, which holds its annual stockholders meeting this July 19.

Mr. Palmiery currently sits on the E-PCI board while Mr. Regino is some sort of non-voting board member getting the same compensation package as regular directors.

There’s a reason for this. You see, Mr. Regino wasn’t the first choice of the GSIS and President Macapagal-Arroyo. That slot was supposed to go to a former policeman whose bio-data didn’t impress the Monetary Board chaired by Rafael Buenaventura, which has tightened the qualifications for bank directors in an effort to strengthen corporate governance (read: transparency and accountability) within the banking industry.

By the time the GSIS submitted the name of Mr. Regino, the E-PCI board had already elected Antonio Basilio, chairman of the Manila Economic Cooperation Office, which handles the country’s diplomatic relations with Taiwan.