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THE
government is getting out of the business of banking
with the private sector and has secured an agreement
with businessman Lucio Tan for a planned share sale
between October to December this year.
At the
annual stockholders’ meeting of the Philippine National
Bank (PNB) on Tuesday, PNB president Omar Byron Mier
said the public offering will involve a total 33 percent
of the banks’ total outstanding shares issued.
“The
public float will increase from 10 percent originally to
33 percent. We will conduct the sale in the final
quarter of the year,” Mier told reporters.
The
exercise, he stressed, will reduce Tan’s equity stake in
the bank to just 67 percent.
Government exposure in PNB at the moment totals 12.53
percent, represented by a direct national government
equity equal to 3.05 percent, plus 9.48 percent held by
the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC).
This
means PNB will be selling the equivalent of 20.47
percent of its authorized capital stock later this year.
How much
the bank will generate from the share sale was not
disclosed, but PNB shares trade for P49 per share at the
stock market at present.
Mier
said they originally planned to sell the equivalent of
10 percent of total outstanding shares, but later
increased it to equal 33 percent, including 90 million
unissued PNB shares.
PNB only
recently completed a five-year financial rehabilitation
program that at one point required the infusion of
government funds totaling P25 billion.
The
rehabilitation program expired on May 3, and along with
it, the authority to act as a government depository
bank.
Notes
from its annual report show the intent to have the
authority extended by another year, with initial
requests having been sent to Finance Secretary Margarito
Teves already.
As
depository bank, PNB may accept government deposits up
to 10 percent of total deposits, or some
P18
billion in this case, based on end-2006 total deposits
of P181.7 billion.
Mier
said they plan to pay in full the balance of the
P25-billion government emergency assistance later this
year,
totaling P6 billion.
This
means less or maybe nonexistent dividend payments for
shareholders this year, but at least PNB will
finally
be debt-free, Mier said.
The bank
expects to generate around P1-billion net income this
year, approximating the net income it made 10 years
earlier, before the regionwide financial contagion made
it very difficult for the bank to post profits.
In the
first three months, the bank posted a consolidated net
income of P308.3 million, or 60 percent more than a year
earlier. |
