STI Holdings Inc. said it had no choice but to act against the Benitez Group, one of the founders of the Philippine Women’s University (PWU), to protect the interest of its shareholders as a publicly listed company.
STI, led by the Tanco family, said the Benitez family, early this month, called for the rescission of its agreement “without offering any payment of kind for all the funding assistance it received.”
“Being a publicly listed company, STI had to protect its interest and shareholders, and eventually cited the Benitez Group in default, the trigger for the resignations to become effective and for STI to gain majority of PWUs’ membership and board,” the company said.
STI is demanding the Benitez Group and Unlad Resources Development Corp. to pay P926 million as part of its agreement, which also called for three-fourths of seats in PWU’s Board of Trustees and membership, or 11 out of 15 members and eight out of 10 trustees.
In 2009 Banco de Oro (BDO) extended a loan to PWU to take out its loan with Metrobank and Bank of Commerce.
As one of the conditions of the loan, BDO required all members and trustees of PWU to submit their irrevocable letters of resignation and assignment of their rights to BDO, in case of loan default. Those letters, which have no date, were now being used by STI against key members of the Benitez family.
STI came into the picture when it claimed to have bailed out PWU in 2011, as it was nearing foreclosure by BDO.
The Tanco group bought the debt from BDO worth about P223 million and lent the school some P26.5 million and Unlad an additional P198 million.
As a result of the loan take-out, the Benitez family entered a separate agreement with the Tanco group to raise the authorized capital of Unlad to P1.5 billion within a month in order to convert STI loans into equity, which, in effect, was how the publicly listed company will be paid.
“It took STI three long years of waiting for the Benitez Group to comply with its obligations and signify its sincere intention to help PWU and its studentry. Please note that STI could have cited the Benitez Group in default as early as November 2011 for failing to meet its obligations under the bailout agreement,” STI said.
The Benitez Group, on the other hand, claimed that the Tanco group “retaliated” after the stakeholders of Jose Abad Santos Memorial School-Quezon (JASMS) City campus resisted the plan to transform the grounds into a commercial complex with the Ayala Land Inc.
“The current act of takeover of PWU was triggered by, and in retaliation for, the refusal of the JASMS community to agree to Tanco’s idea of commercializing the JASMS campus,” it said.
JASMS is a PWU-affiliated school offering basic education. Its campuses are in Quezon City and Manila.