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Interestingly, it was the core base of only one bank
that panicked and wanted to get their money out last
Wednesday morning. That was when the country’s two
largest banks—the Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. and
the Banco de Oro Universal Bank—announced that they
invested in financial products sold by bankrupt
investment bank, Lehman Brothers, and Bank of
America-bought brokerage firm Merrill Lynch.
The
panic was, of course, short-lived as branch heads and
staff spent the early part of their working day
explaining to clients that their money remained safe.
Hey, even the majority stockholder made some phone calls
to big clients to personally assure them of the bank’s
stability.
By
disclosing their exposures to the Philippine Stock
Exchange and immediately putting in loss provisions
under Bangko Sentral regulations, the two banks merely
practiced good governance
2008 is,
of course, the Year of the Earth Rat, which is
characterized by speculations in commodities and the
stock market. While promising good financial returns,
rat years are not kind to those who speculate
indiscriminately and who overextend themselves.
****
There’s
talk that Pepe Alcantara will be the new president and
chief executive officer of Figaro Coffee Systems. Not
much is known about Alcantara although he carried the
vague title of officer-in-charge of corporate planning
of Negros Navigation Co. about a year ago.
Figaro’s
corporate face, former president Chit Juan, moves
laterally to head the Figaro Foundation, a member of the
League of Corporate Foundations (LCF) that she currently
heads. Juan’s latest baby is Serendra-based Echostore,
which sells organic stuff produced by LCF beneficiaries.
****
Did you
know 1:
Business continues to be slow for recruiters
specializing in sending nurses to the United States.
You see, the US Embassy continues to make it very
difficult for nursing graduates to get visas.
To get
by, many of these recruiters are either booking for the
Middle East, where the monthly pay is less but the
demand is abundant, or getting into local hiring,
particularly for call centers.
Did you
know 2:
Forget what you’ve learned in grade school social
science. With so much regional culinary diversity, there
is no national dish. But there are dishes or ways of
cooking such as adobo, sinigang, and paksiw, which
appear in dizzying variations all over the country.
This is
the gist of the book, Culinarya, which will be
launched today by the group of foodies led by Via Mare’s
Glenda Baretto and Cibo’s Gaita Fores, who want to make
Filipino food at par with other Asian cuisine.
Did you
know 3:
The Philippines needs to have 2,000 science enrollees
every year if it is to improve its global
competitiveness.
Right
now, university students taking up any science course
(read: that’s from freshman to senior level) number a
little over 3,000 nationwide.
For the
past 10 years, the Philippines has been lagging behind
Thailand in global competitiveness, with the Philippines
ranking 71st out of 137 countries last year. The
country’s ranking, while in the middle of the pack, has
not improved over the years. |
