Yuchengco confirms being forced to sell shares

MANILA, PHilippines - Insurance and banking magnate Alfonso Yuchengco confirmed yesterday he was coerced to sell his stake in Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., bolstering Senator Panfilo Lacson’s claim that government pressure played a major role in the entry of a Hong Kong-based group into the country’s largest telecommunications firm in 1998.

Yuchengco issued a statement a day after Lacson exposed the arm-twisting tactics allegedly resorted to by then President Joseph Estrada that allowed First Pacific Co. Ltd. to take control of PLDT through the acquisition of Yuchengco’s 7.75 percent interest in Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC) 11 years ago.

Controlled by the Cojuangco and Yuchengco camps, PTIC was the single largest shareholder of PLDT then, owning about 28 percent of the firm.

“I confirm the statements made by Senator Panfilo Lacson

 in his privilege speech relating to my 7.75 percent holdings, equivalent to 2,017,650 PLDT common shares. These shares were taken from me in 1998 through sheer intimidation and serious threat to my businesses, myself and my family,” Yuchengco said in a statement issued through his

 lawyers from the Villaraza, Cruz, Marcelo and Angcangco Law Office. The lawyers told The STAR that Yuchengco is currently in the United States and is expected to be back in the country in two weeks.

PLDT, however, insisted that the company’s chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan (MVP) and the entire PLDT group “have maintained very good relations with the Yuchengco family and their various businesses,” citing that Yuchengco’s daughter Helen Y. Dee had been part of the company’s board of directors for 11 years now.

Yuchengco’s lawyers declined to comment on this, saying that the Yuchengcos have not authorized anyone to speak on that matter yet.

Lacson claimed last Monday that Estrada pressured Yuchengco to sell his stake in PTIC to Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC), the local flagship of First Pacific. 

He alleged that Estrada used the Philippine National Police to harass Yuchengco’s son Tito “with threat of arrest on some trumped-up drug charges, to force his father to sell.”

The local stock market fell 32.37 points or 1.15 percent yesterday to close at 2,789.36 as foreign investors unloaded their shares in PLDT following Lacson’s exposé and Yuchengco’s confirmation of the senator’s claim.

PLDT was the top foreign-sold issue, with foreign investors having a net selling position of P174 million. 

Yuchengco, former ambassador to China, Japan, and the United Nations, heads the Yuchengco Group of Companies which encompasses 60 corporations in banking, education, construction, and health care.

Yuchengco single-handedly built the Malayan Group of Companies into the largest general insurance group in the Philippines the 1940s and 1950s.

He formed Great Pacific Life Assurance Corp., one of the largest in the country, and subsequently went on to make important contributions in political, diplomatic and general business areas.

He also helped build other sectors of the financial services industry in the Philippines, making contributions in developing the banking and capital markets.