Romualdez family to keep EPCIB stake

The Romualdez family’s Trans Middle East Philippine Equities Inc. is not yet ready to give up its stake in Equitable PCI Bank in spite of a tempting offer from an unidentified investor group to buy shares held by major shareholders in EPCI Bank at P95 each.

EPCIBank vice-chairman and director Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said his family is keeping its 7.1 percent shareholdings in the country’s third largest lender given the latter’s improving growth prospects and ability to continue to attract customers and potential investors. The family’s stake is equivalent to 51,827,640 shares in EPCIBank.

"I don’t think we would be selling our shares. It’s a great bank. Who wouldn’t want to be part of this fantastic institution. Pinag-aagawan nga eh," Romualdez said.

An offer of P95 values EPCIBank at P69.06 billion. The bank’s current market capitalization stands at P54 billion.

The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) has placed its entire EPCIBank shares on the auction block, seeking a minimum of P92 per share, the price at which it bought its stake in the bank in 1999.

It extended for another month or until May 8 the deadline for the submission of bids for its 90,078,333 EPCIBank shares to allow interested parties to finalize their bids and consequently come up with the best offer possible.

The GSIS said it received inquiries from two foreign investor groups based in California but did not name them. It hopes to raise at least P8.37 billion from the sale of its shares in EPCIBank.

The SM Group, however, said it has not received a written binding offer supposedly for P95 per share. Its shares in EPCIBank are held by listed investment holding company SM Investments Corp. and Banco de Oro Universal Bank.

The P95 offer price is much higher than the P56.50 per share the SM Group paid when it acquired the Go family’s 24.76-percent stake in the bank. SM Group later raised its stake to 34 percent.

The SM Group had offered to merge BDO with EPCIBank through a share swap with BDO as the surviving entity. It has proposed to swap 1.6 of BDO shares for every share of EPCIBank. When the SM Group made the offer, the bid valued EPCIBank shares at P76.

The merger offer, however, lapsed without any agreement as the GSIS and Trans-Middle East are against the proposal. The merger proposal needs a vote of 67 percent of shares.

Should all major EPCIBAnk shareholders agree to sell their stakes to the unnamed buyer, the latter would have to buy the remaining 20 percent of the bank at the same price as required under the Securities Regulation Code.