TWO of the Lopez-controlled listed companies were among last week’s biggest losers. These were First Philippine Holdings Corp., an index stock and Benpres Holdings Corp.

Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) would have been the third had it not recovered on Friday, a performance that saved it from landing among 30 worst-performing stocks in the week ended May 29.

Despite its late rebound during the week, Meralco registered a record low since it removed the classification of its stocks into common A and common B shares.

Meralco’s beatings apparently resulted from the heavy and relentless media blitz against the Lopezes instigated by Winston Garcia and, lately, by the questionable order issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission stopping the Lopezes from voting on certain proxies solicited by Meralco’s management team.

Garcia owns one Meralco share but is using the 249.139 million Meralco shares, equivalent to 22.349 percent, which are owned by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), in his personal campaign to topple the Lopez-led management and take over the Philippines’s largest electricity retailer. He heads GSIS as president and general manager and is also the vice chairman of its board of trustees.

Defying Garcia’s attacks on its owners, First Gen Corp. closed 2.94 -percent higher at P35 on value turnover of P75.824 million. FGen is the Lopezes’s listed holding company, which owns a number of independent power producers.

A filing lists First Holdings as FGen’s majority stockholder with 443.967 million shares, or 54.8 percent. In addition, FGHC International Ltd., an FGHC unit, holds 92.238 million shares, or 11.4 percent.

As the week’s No. 26 gainer, FGen was not what it used to be: It hit a 30-day high of P42 on April 25 and recorded a low of P32 on May 8.

Big index stock gainers

Union Bank of the Philippines was the biggest gainers among the stocks included in the computation of the Philippine Stock Exchange. It climbed 11.11 percent to at P35 on Friday on value turnover of P36.907 million.

Incidentally, Union Bank now handles GSIS e-card issued to over 1.4 million government workers who contribute part of their monthly salaries to the fund. It succeeded in taking the business from Land Bank of the Philippines, which used to be GSIS’s bank in serving its members nationwide.

It was learned that LandBank originally proposed the e-card, which ended up with Union Bank, in which Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. owns 232.294 million shares, or 36.22 percent.

Aboitiz Equity is the listed holding company of the Aboitizes who, like Garcia, are from Cebu. It also owns 5.416 billion shares, or 73.60 percent, in Aboitiz Power Corp.

Aside from Aboitiz Power, the Aboitizes also control Aboitiz Transport System Corp. through Aboitiz Equity Ventures, which owns 1.889 billion, or 77.24 percent. The three companies are listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).

Only one Philippine Stock Exchange Index mining stock was among the week’s top gainers. Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. A closed at P0.32, up 10.34 percent. It had a value turnover of P65.423 million.

In a filing posed on the PSE web site of May 27, Lepanto told regulators that “Zijin Mining Co. Ltd. has completed initial assessment of the feasibility of developing the deep-seated god-copper porphyry project in Mankayan, Benguet Province.” The project is owned by Far Southeast Gold Resources Inc., a Lepanto subsidiary. “Lepanto and Zijin are now in active negotiations toward finalizing the definitive agreements contemplated in our memorandum of understanding for the development of the project,” Lepanto said in the filing.

As in the past few weeks since Garcia began his tirades against the Lopezes, who are not from Cebu but are from Iloilo, Meralco never had net foreign buying of its shares.

Last week, Meralco closed on Friday at P61.50 and had for the week value turnover of P955.441 million, of which P169.547, or 17.745 percent was net foreign selling. This means foreign funds, fearing Garcia’s crusade to take over the company in the guise of doing it for the government and for GSIS’s 1.4 million members, were still dumping Meralco shares.

Here is the worst news for stockholders of Meralco, which used to be one of the market’s more reliable index stocks: It recorded a new low of P56 on May 29, when it opened at P59, hit a high of P62 and closed at P61.50.

Based on the market results, GSIS’s members’ investments in 249.139 million Meralco shares had market value of P20.554 billion at a high of P82.50 on April 18 and P13.952 billion at a low of P56 on May 29.

This means they already incurred paper loss of P6.602 billion in a very short period of 41 days, or P161.024 million a day.

By sticking with Meralco shares, the Social Security System lost P1.63 billion on its placements totaling 61.529 million shares, or P39.756 million a day.

MOBILE-phone users may finally see rates go down. This, as the country’s telecommunications companies recently said they will carefully study proposals from the National Telecommunications Commission’s (NTC), which seek to limit access charges in short message service (SMS) to not more than P0.15 and put a cap of P1.50 per minute for cellular calls.

Worst beating yet for Meralco

TWO of the Lopez-controlled listed companies were among last week’s biggest losers. These were First Philippine Holdings Corp., an index stock and Benpres Holdings Corp.

New York-listed AES Philippines Corp. interested in participating in the bidding for the energy contracts of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) with independent power producers (IPPs).

PUERTO Princesa—Publicly listed Holcim Philippines Inc. is calibrating its industry growth projections for the year to only 6 percent to 8 percent due to uncertainties caused by the US sub-prime mess and resulting recession, as well as the continued increase in prices of construction materials. 

REAL-estate firm Eton Properties Philippines Inc. is looking at developing two more properties in Cebu and Batangas, while still undertaking the construction of 10 existing projects.

IT was indeed a busy week for Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president and general manager Winston Garcia. There was, of course, the annual stockholders meeting of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) on Tuesday where the Lopez Group seemingly won Round 1 by retaining the management status quo chaired by Manuel Lopez.