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THE
Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) may have seen
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) as the best stock to
invest its funds in, so that it increased its stakes in
the company to 245.819 million shares or 22.05 percent
as of March 14, 2008, from 82.437 million shares or 8.20
percent in February 2007. To GSIS’s over one million
member-government workers and the managers of their
funds, Meralco may not be a bad choice. Lately, however,
the fund’s investments have gone sour.
The
market monitor showed that in only 12 trading sessions,
GSIS, which also owns a significant stake in San Miguel
Corp. (SMC) but is not represented in SMC’s 15-man
board, incurred a huge “paper loss” of P4.548 billion,
or 22.426 percent, in its Meralco placements.
Here is
the computation of how the loss came about: At Meralco’s
30-day high of P82.50 on April 21, 2008, GSIS’s 245.819
million had market value of P20.28 billion, which, by
May 8, had plunged to P15.732 billion at the session’s
low of P64.
On
Thursday, Meralco hit a high of P68.50 and fell to
P67.50 at session’s close.
Asked
what has been happening to Meralco, once one of the
market’s favorite blue chips along with Philippine Long
Distance Telephone Co., stockbrokers said foreign funds
have been selling.
“Ayaw
nila ng [They don’t like a] government takeover,”
Joey Roxas of Eagle Equities Inc. said.
Roxas
was referring to the criticisms hurled by Winston
Garcia, GSIS’s president and general manager, at the
Lopezes, who control Meralco’s 11-man board, for the way
they are running the company. He has sought more
transparency in Meralco’s deals with Lopez owned
companies. |
