INSIDERS’ trades. Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman of the board, and Napoleon L. Nazareno, president and chief executive officer, of Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel) bought 120,000 and 580,000 shares of the company, respectively. The two top executive officers did not pay the same price for their acquisitions. Pangilinan bought his at P7.20 per share, while Nazareno paid P7.2922 per share. They bought the shares on May 9, when the stock opened at P7.20, but dropped to a low of P7.20 and closed at its session’s high of P7.30. Pangilinan and Nazareno combined for a total acquisition of 5.093 million shares, equivalent to 68.428 percent of the day’s value turnover of P7.444 million. After the trades, Pangilinan owned 3.82 million Piltel shares. Nazareno used to own one Piltel share to qualify him to get elected to the board. Piltel hit a 30-day high of P7.60 on May 30 and a month’s low of P6.60 on April 30.

Buyback. From January to June 4, Grand Plaza Hotel (GPH) had only one trade, which was on April 18, when 100 shares changed ownership at P41. This shows GPH is a rare market commodity and that its stockholders would prefer to hold on to their interests despite GPH’s offers to buy them out. In buying back its own shares, the company spent P111.413 million in 2005; P145.69 million in 2006; and P145.707 million in 2007. By end-2007, it had already spent P842.785 million in reacquiring 16.856 million shares, which it reported in one filing as its treasury shares.

Still buying. Grand Plaza is not about to give up on reacquiring all shares available in the market. On May 30, it informed the Philippine Stock Exchange of its offer to buy back from June 6 to 12, one share for every 25 shares held by stockholders. Since GPH has 70.462 million outstanding shares (87.318 million issued shares minus 16.856 million treasury shares), it is now targeting 2.818 million shares in its new buy-back offer. If successful, GPH will have treasury shares of 19.505 million shares, which will bring its reacquisition cost to P983.71 million and its outstanding shares to 67.813 million. As of March 31, Grand Plaza had two big stockholders—the Philippine Fund Ltd. of Bermuda with 37.67 million shares, or 43.15 percent; and Zatrio Pte. Ltd. of Singapore with 23.309 million shares, or 26.69 percent. PCD Nominee Corp. holds 8.639 million shares, or 9.89 percent, for Filipinos, and 261,469 shares for foreigners. In computing the percentage, the company still used the issued shares.

Rewards for the chairman. Arsenio T. Ng, chief executive officer (CEO) of Transpacific Broadband Group International Inc. (TBGI) will start exercising his option to buy 35 million shares at P1 par value, which the company’s board granted him on November 19, 2007, “for services rendered as CEO during the period 2001 to 2007.”

In addition, Ng may also acquire at par 5 million TBGI shares a year starting 2008. In its filing, TBGI said when buying these shares, its board set one condition: that Ng “will not sell the shares acquired by him under the said stock option in quantities exceeding 20 percent of the trading volume of the Philippine Stock Exchange in any single business day.” (Does the volume refer to the entire market or to TBGI’s alone?) TBGI hit a 30-day high of P3.60 on May 29 and a low of P2.78 on April 28.

Buy-back 2. KS Investment Pte. Ltd. (KSIPE) bought in May 16.521 million shares in Keppel Philippine Marine Inc., increasing its holdings to 1.884 million KPM shares, or 94.4529 percent. The Singaporean-owned Keppel group has an ongoing program to buy back all KPM shares that it does yet own. As planned, KSIPE was eyeing in its latest buy-back offer at P2.50 per share 135.796 million shares, or 6.8042 percent. If successful, Keppel will own 100 percent of its listed unit, which would be tantamount to taking it private again.

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Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman of the board, and Napoleon L. Nazareno, president and chief executive officer, of Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel) bought 120,000 and 580,000 shares of the company, respectively.