THE board of the Philippine Stock Exchange Inc. (PSE) has approved the plan to secure more than P1.5 billion in loans to fund its acquisition of PDS Holdings Inc.
PSE said it will raise the amount from Banco de Oro, Metrobank or Bank of Commerce.
Some P1.15 billion will be used to buy additional shares in PDS, which it plans to merge with and another P400 million to fund the fit-out and capital requirements of the company.
The payment term is one year.
“This supersedes previous resolutions passed by the board last 27 May 2015 and 23 November 2016,” PSE said.
The merger between the equities and the fixed-income securities trading floors, however, may take a little longer after the PSE decided to pull out its request for the local antitrust body to review the combination and refile it at another time.
PSE, which owns the equities trading floor, on September 4 withdrew its request for review of its merger deal with the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) after the agency asked for additional information on the merger.
“There are certain information that are needed for us to make a determination that the transaction does not have anticompetitive practice,” Johannes Benjamin R. Bernabe, PCC commissioner, told reporters.
The said information included some operational efficiencies when the two platforms are merged.
It pertains to plans of operation after acquisition, possible efficiency of the transaction and how will this benefit the public, investors and other stakeholders.
“We sat down and they came into agreement that PSE and PDS to withdraw and refile the notification [for review], so they will have more time,” Bernabe said. The PSE filed its notification sometime in July after it signed an agreement with the Bankers Association of the Philippines for its 23.8-percent stake in PDS Holdings Corp.
PSE now owns the majority of PDS.
The PDS Holdings owns the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp., the trading platform for the fixed-income market.
Aside from the PCC, the PSE also needs approval from regulators Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
1 comment
this is fake news, PSE does not own majority of PDS, they are still up against Landbank