Pangilinan ace: He knows where Salim loot is buried

NO POINT INSISTING: It seems that Sonny Alvarez will tough it out as acting secretary of natural resources despite mounting pressure for him to follow the example of the other Alvarez – Bebot of the transportation department – who resigned with grace when the CA also failed to confirm his appointment for the nth time early this week.

Nobody can begrudge Sonny his option to hang on. Kanya-kanyang style lang yan. We dig our respective graves.

But with due respect to his Jesuit friends, our one-bit opinion is that it might be best for everybody for Sonny to give it up. The badly battered secretary will no longer be effective or credible anyway, even if confirmed in the next round, so why insist?

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GOLDMINE AT DENR?: The DENR is not worth all that wear and tear on Sonny and his family. They deserve some rest from the whirlwind of accusations coming from detractors. With him continuing to draw flak, the environment program of his President will suffer.

His quitting now will not mean pleading guilty to the charges hurled at him before the CA. On the contrary, look at how the resignation of Bebot refurbished overnight his muddied image.

Even now, a lot of people are asking what goldmine is there at the DENR that Sonny refuses to let anybody else touch it. It’s that bad.

But if President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wants to rise or fall with Sonny, that’s her own business. Some commanders feel good showing concern for their lieutenants in trouble.

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CREEPING MONOPOLY: It’s stimulating watching business titans fighting over turf. When John Gokongwei, headman of JG Summit, sneaked into Singapore weeks ago and forged a deal with the Salim group of First Pacific for control of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Fort Bonifacio Land, fireworks immediately flared in Manila.

The main bone of contention is PLDT, not so much Fort Bonifacio, because the Gokongwei group already has Digitel Telecommunications whose possible integration into PLDT was feared by insiders as detrimental to their financial interests.

In simple terms, the law says that while a person in competitive or antagonistic business may buy and hold shares of a publicly listed corporation, he may not be elected to a seat in the board.

Years back, Gokongwei who was/is also in the food business tried to vote himself into the San Miguel Corp. board on the strength of his sizeable block of SanMig shares, but his entry was thwarted on the basis of that law as well as the by-laws of San Miguel.

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DIGITEL TO SAP PLDT?: The PLDT board has served notice that it sees Gokongwei’s projected entry as a threat and will oppose it. The board said it would not allow any due diligence audit by the Gokongwei group and ordered everybody down the line not to entertain outsiders or give information about the company.

It was pointed out that Digitel, which has a landline system and is poised as the third cellphone company of consequence, has huge unpaid obligations that are likely to sap the resources of PLDT if Gokongwei’s entry and control of PLDT pushes through.

Some quarters ask, however, why anybody would presume to tell the Salim group how to run its own business. What they are saying is that even if PLDT president Manuel V. Pangilinan is opposed to Gonkongwei’s entry, if the board in Hong Kong says it’s their wish, he has to follow the marching orders.

Pangilinan is a ranking member the Salim board that approved the Gokongwei bid. He must have argued hard and long against it, but was outvoted. While he could throw all arguments during the deliberations, once a majority decision is made, should not he respect the board action?

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GOKONGWEI OPENER: This assumes that he has clear instruction to let Gokongwei in. It could also be, as some active minds are wont to speculate, that the Salim group allowed the Gokongwei deal to prosper (short of its being fully and irrevocably carried out) just to be able to flush out better offers.

An intriguing question is if Gokongwei’s offer is just being used by the Salims as the opening bid to attract better bids for its assets on the block.

Pangilinan’s beef should be with Salim – father or son, or both – and not with Gokongwei. If he has not done so, we think Pangilinan – the high-priced finance whiz kid from Pampanga – should talk things over with the old man Soedomo Salim in Singapore or the leading Salim son Anthony in Hong Kong.

It’s none of our business, but if Pangilinan cannot accept what the headman says, all he has to do is quit, not kick while he is still inside.

But our gut feel is that Pangilinan has talked with the right Salim about his and their options and everything is clear between them. They both know what to do – and when to do it.

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SMART INTEGRATION: Back at PLDT, the Digitel issue remains a concern. We really don’t care either way provided Digitel’s integration would mean better service for us users. It has happened before here and abroad that one company absorbs a competitor, or a competitor absorbs another company, with beneficial results for clients and customers.

The phone company Smart, for instance, got into the PLDT network, but so far we have not seen its being woven into the net as causing an erosion in the service efficiency of PLDT.

We are not in possession of insider information. We’re talking merely as a customer – sort of an outsider looking in – who is not privy to the detailed negotiations and conditions that attended the Smart deal, also the Piltel transaction, with PLDT.

If it would happen that Digitel comes in with Gokongwei, we assume that the new majority in PLDT would not allow any deterioration of its services.

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GOKONGWEI DEBTS: Reports have it that Pangilinan is putting together with PLDT chairman Tonyboy Cojuangco a core bloc and a support group that would improve on the offer of Gokongwei. To made a difference, their bid should not just match Gokongwei’s $750 million, but substantially improve on it.

Where will the money come from? Diehard followers of Pangilinan swear that there are enough dollars between him and Cojuangco, not to mention possible financiers. Besides, they do not have to put up the entire bid price – like Gokongwei did not.

In a deal like this, the bidder could just produce a sort of down payment and pay the rest over time. If the cash cow is PLDT, the amortization could be raised from earnings of the company and you then grill the steak, not the whole cow, in its own fat. It’s much like buying a van. You pay a down payment and use the van’s earnings for paying the monthly amortization.

This talk of millions of dollars, a tad short of a billion bucks!, has riled one of our favorite congressmen, Willy Villarama of Bulacan, enough to ask why Gokongwei is not paying his many overdue obligations around town (sample: P40 billion owed government for Digitel) if he had that much money.

Valid point. The way Villarama asked it, we’re tempted to ask if Gokongwei by any chance also owes him something.

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PANGILINAN’S ACE: When reading the flurry of statements and news reports on the deal, keep in mind always that Pangilinan is an insider in the Salim group. We would dare say that that his genius was what propelled the Salim patriarch then hanging around Suharto of Indonesia into orbiting into the dizzying world of top finance.

If the setting were Manila, we would label Salim a crony, and proceed to conclude, even without basis, that part of the Suharto loot has been laundered and squirreled away by the Salims.

The hyperactive Manila mind might add that just before the anti-corruption crackdown on Suharto, the strongman’s assets, part of it stashed away in Hong Kong vaults of the Salims, had to be moved out and scattered – some of it finding its way into Manila.

Whatever it was, everybody in Manila believed that the Salims depended heavily on Pangilinan’s genius as they bought, rehabilitated and sold pricey companies, diversified, made more money and invested and diversified some more.

In short, Pangilinan must know, in more than a literal sense, where the Salim loot is buried. That, my barber says, is Pangilinan’s ace as he plays high-stakes pusoy with the Salim group.

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