Unifying factor

Until the board of governors decide on a chairman who can serve as a unifying factor, Philippine Stock Exchange president Francis Lim will also be concurrent acting chairman until elections next year.

As an independent director, the last chairman, Peter Favila, was able to get the board (basically made up of three groups who, uhm, can’t stand each other) to work together.

Mr. Favila is now, of course, Trade and Industry Secretary. That means he gets paid a monthly salary – small as that is –compared to serving gratis et amore at PSE, a sore point for Mr. Favila at PSE.

As head of the Department of Trade and Industry, Mr. Favila also sits on the board of several government agencies such as the National Development Co., which, in turn, oversees the Philippine Infrastructure Co. that will handle the country’s major infrastructure projects.

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As Finance Secretary, Margarito Teves will be attending the anniversaries next month of Land Bank of the Philippines (which he headed until recently) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which is currently headed by Jose Mario Bunag.

As everybody knows, the Finance Secretary is the chairman of Landbank. The BIR is under the supervision of the Department of Finance.

BIR’s anniversary last year was highlighted by some of its head office employees having, uhm, indigestion, the result of ordering the warm food too early and distributing it to employees too late.

By the way, Landbank is currently headless, with the bank’s four executive vice-presidents running their own turfs as best as they can.

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Development Bank of the Philippines president and chief executive officer Reynaldo David advanced P1 billion of its 2005 dividends to stockholder, the national government, to help bridge the widening budget deficit due to revenue losses from the non-implementation of the amended EVAT law.

The remittance will be done in five tranches (or every other day starting yesterday) and will be enough to meet 6.5 days of foregone revenues from EVAT.

Rey David’s team has a fighting net income target of P3 billion for 2005. As of the first semester, the bank registered a net income of P1.54 billion, 71 percent higher than the year ago level.

Mr. David also intends to enter the OFW market in a big way, with plans to open remittance centers in countries where there are large Filipino communities such as Milan, Italy. Just like most other banks, Hong Kong is pretty much conceded to Philippine National Bank.