BF creditors to wait longer for payments

MANILA, Philippines - Creditors of the shuttered Banco Filipino Savings and Mortgage Bank are likely to wait longer for payment as government efforts to dispose all the bank’s assets move at a slow pace.

“We are collecting loans and selling ROPA (real and other properties acquired) so we can eventually distribute proceeds to creditors,” said Cristina Orbeta, executive vice president of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC).

Asked later on if PDIC will be able to pay creditors this year, Orbeta said: “I don’t think so.”

Creditors include the bank’s stockholders and depositors which have more than P500,000 in deposits with the savings bank. Insured depositors with P500,000 or less worth of deposits were all already paid their claims.

On March 15, 2011, Banco Filipino was ordered shut down by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) after it failed to service depositor claims despite “considerable time” given to its owners to bring the lender back to financial health.

This was later on challenged before the Court of Appeals, which in a decision dated Nov. 21, upheld Banco Filipino’s closure, paving the way for PDIC to continue liquidating the bank’s assets. 

A total of 835 pieces of properties are up for auction, all of which will be sold after being appraised, Orbeta said. These properties are included in the bank’s assets, which, as of March 2011, had a total value of P11.77 billion.

The bank’s liabilities, on the other hand, totaled P23.02 billion during the same period for a negative corporate value of P11.25 billion.

“There are many properties and they involve processes. This will take time although we have already started bidding some of them,” Orbeta explained.

Jun Villaret, officer-in-charge of PDIC corporate affairs group, agreed, saying in a text message: “PDIC is exhausting all efforts to convert closed bank’s assets into cash prior to distribution to creditors.”

“This is a procedure observed for all closed banks under PDIC and will thus be similarly observed in the case of BF (Banco Filipino),” he added.