PAY and perks. Winston F. Garcia, president and general manager of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) was the eighth-highest paid government official in 2002—the latest report by the Commission on Audit showed—with P5.621 million. Should Garcia succeed in his personal battle to take over the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), he and his associates would replace the Lopezes and their managers as recipients of P96.987 million, the amount which Meralco estimated its top nine executive officers will receive this year. The amount translates to P10.754 million a year each, almost twice the salaries and allowances Garcia received in 2002.

No cheers but boos. Here is probably the reason why Meralco employees—who, aside from their loyalty to the Lopezes, are also stockholders—booed Garcia:  they are probably afraid the shares they bought under the company’s employees’ stock option plan at P62 per share from May 16 to 31, 2007, may soon be worthless should Garcia and his group succeed in taking over Meralco’s board and management. Meralco closed on Wednesday at its session’s low of P60. Like them, consumers may also be afraid of his kind of management at GSIS, which, under him, cannot keep up-to-date the records of loan payments and remittances of its more than 1.4 million government workers. GSIS could have learned something on records on management, if it could not share its expertise. It sent representatives to a recently-concluded seminar on the subject held at Davao City.

No additional capital. Cosmos Bottling Corp. has been penalized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) only after it was acquired by The Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta from San Miguel Corp. for violating certain rules on filing of reports. As a result, Cosmos is not expected to grow or expand its operations because the SEC suspended its permit to issue or sell securities on May 10, 2007 and finally revoked it on March 13, 2008. This means Cosmos, which is owned by a subsidiary of Coca-Cola, is prohibited from issuing shares to its parent company if it wants to get additional capital. However, Justina F. Callangan, director of SEC’s corporation finance department—who signed the order of revocation—did not have to worry about the public. Cosmos has only a few public stockholders who hold 16.153 million shares, or 1.788 percent of outstanding common shares. Philippine Bottlers Inc., a wholly-owned unit of Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines Inc., owns 887.408 million shares, or 98.212 percent. As a result of the SEC’s penalty, trading on Cosmos remains suspended. It was last traded on May 23, 2006, when it closed at P3.

IPO proceeds. Phoenix Petroleum Philippines Inc. raised P256.114 million but spent more than that amount—P256.644 million.  In a filing in response to a letter from the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), the company detailed the projects where it used the proceeds from its initial public offering (IPO) as against the amounts contained in its prospectus. The SEC and PSE have been strictly monitoring the use of IPO proceeds to see if the new public companies do not divert the money from programmed projects to other uses such as payment of loans. Only recently, the SEC ordered I-Remit Inc. to pay a fine of P100,000 “due to alleged deviation…in the use of the IPO proceeds. Alma Santiago, corporate secretary, told the exchange that I-Remit “shall be filing a request for reconsideration of the aforesaid assessment. Well, the SEC can sometimes be lenient. In the case of Union Bank of the Philippines, it assessed the bank at P1.217 million as ordered by the Supreme Court but later reduced the amount to P232,500 in 2004, which translates to a huge discount of 80.895 percent. Union Bank must have very good lawyers. Will SEC also require other newly listed companies to disclose the disbursement of the money they got from the public? The SEC should not pick on companies who could not hire lawyers as good as, if not better than, the lawyers who argued for Union Bank on penalty reduction.

Insiders’ trade. Wilma Valle Galvante, senior vice president for entertainment TV group of GMA Network Inc. sold 70,000 GMA 7 shares at P7.50 each on May 26, leaving her with 575,000 shares. She was the first insider to trade on GMA 7 shares since January 25, 2008, when Felipe Lapuz Gozon, bought 177,000 shares at P6.30 each. After buying, Gozon owned a total of 12.312 million shares of which 6.177 million he directly owned and 6.135 million shares held by FLG Management. GMA Network reported a consolidated net income of P453.586 million in the first quarter of 2008, up 6.074 percent in the same period in 2007. GMA 7 closed on Wednesday at its session’s low of P7.50, down from P7.60 on Tuesday, despite the declaration of P0.25 per share dividend, which it announced on May 22, 2008.

THE phone giant is not immune to economic concerns affecting the country after all. The rising inflation, coupled with the peso’s continued rise against the dollar, has started to take a toll on the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.’ (PLDT) businesses.

Universal Motors to put up new plant

COMMERCIAL vehicle manufacturer Universal Motors Corp. (UMC) is investing P205 million for the establishment of a production facility for five new models of commercial vehicles.

The Board of Investments (BOI) recently approved the grant of full incentives to the P6.148-billion expansion project of Semirara Mining Corp.’s coal mining facility in Antique.

EXPRESSING hopes that power rates in the country could be lowered to a comfortable level for industries, Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) chairman Meneleo Carlos on Wednesday expressed hope that local power generators would be able to provide reliable power supply at the least cost.

FILIPINO software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist firm Morph Labs has developed a new capability for its Morph AppSpace virtual application environment that will allow developers to deploy and run highly-scalable Facebook applications in as little as five minutes.

PUBLICLY-listed Basic Petroleum Corp. has been granted by its management the go-signal to engage in negotiations for a joint-venture arrangement for cassava production in Zamboanga Sibugay and Zamboanga City.

 Winston F. Garcia, president and general manager of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) was the eighth-highest paid government official in 2002—the latest report by the Commission on Audit showed—with P5.621 million.