THE Gotianun-led Filinvest Alabang Inc. (FAI) is spending P5.6 billion to build a four-tower residential community within the 244-hectare Filinvest Corporate City (FCC) in Alabang.

Called The Levels, the project will be built in four phases in the next five years. It will sit on a 14,000-square meter lot.

“We will launch it in the third quarter,” said Josephine Gotianun, president of Filinvest Development Corp. (FDC), the parent firm of FAI.

FAI, which handles the group’s developments within FCC, expects to register around P7.8 billion in total sales from the said project.

Apart from The Levels, Gotianun said they will also expand The Bellevue Manila by putting a third tower within the hotel complex. A 500-room hotel called Acasia Grove is also being built.

FAI just launched the Entrata Complex, a four-tower development which features a hotel, small-office-home-office (Soho) units and two office towers built on a retail podium. Entrata is located beside the Festival Supermall.

Gotianun said despite rising inflation, the group is still bullish on its real-estate business.

“We are still on track. There are financing schemes that will still keep our products affordable even if we raise our prices,” she said.

Apart from real estate, FDC is also into financial services (EastWest Bank), sugar refining (Pacific Sugar Holdings Corp.) and horizontal and BPO developments (Filivest Land Inc.).

In the first quarter, the group’s real estate operations posted P1.1 billion in net revenue. Gross sales improved 19 percent with increase in sales of FLI. Likewise gross profit margin improved to 54-percent due to higher number of booked lot sales, which has a margin of 50 percent to 60 percent.

Meanwhile, financial and banking services’ net revenue went up 63 percent to P605 million during the period, mostly coming from other income with the increase in service charges for loans and securities.

FCC has single-handedly revitalized the Alabang area and transformed the 244 hectares of land into a premier satellite city and central business district.

THE Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) Group said its foreign partners in the $550-million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable project should have a say on a proposed policy seeking mandatory interconnection of backhaul networks to all landing stations.

Loadstar Investment shares surge despite losses, deficit

OIL company Petron Corp. closed trading on Friday at P6 in a performance that landed it among the market’s 30 biggest gainers last week.

THE Gotianun-led Filinvest Alabang Inc. (FAI) is spending P5.6 billion to build a four-tower residential community within the 244-hectare Filinvest Corporate City (FCC) in Alabang.

LESS than two weeks after opening its operations in the Philippines, business process outsourcing firm TechTeam Global Inc. announced it bought the parent company of Manila-based Onvaio Asia Services Inc.

FLAG carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) will increase its flight frequencies to Macau and Singapore.

In a statement, PAL said it will mount flights to Macau every day from the five-times-weekly frequency.

SAN JOSE, Antique—To help lessen dependence on imported fuel oil, Filipino-owned Sun West Water and Electric Co. (Suweco) inked a power- supply agreement with Antique Electric Cooperative Inc. (Anteco) for the output of its planned 8-megawatt (MW) minihydro-power project.

LAST week: Philippine stock prices dropped anew by 3.10-percent week-on-week to 2,739.70 after the government reported a higher-than-expected May inflation figure of 9.6 percent. Another major factor was the decision of the Bangko Sentral to raise its key-interest rates by 25 basis points to 5.25 percent.

TALK about clout. Development Bank of the Philippines chairman (DBP), Patricia Santo Tomas, and president, Reynaldo David, introduced last Wednesday, the bank’s first batch of 120 nursing scholars to President Arroyo.