Philippines' Central Bank intervenes in PBCom sale

BSP persuades the Chung, Nubla and Luy families to divest stakes from lender.

State-owned Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) Thursday said it is in talks with Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Bangko Sentral or BSP) to persuade shareholders of Philippine Bank of Communications (PBCom) to sell their combined 67-percent stake in the bank to a strategic third party investor.

“We are talking with the Bangko Sentral. They are also concerned about this,” PDIC President Jose Nograles said, referring to the lapse of the five-year period in which shareholders of the bank should have divested a combined 67-percent stake in exchange of the financial assistance extended by the government in 2004.

“Bangko Sentral is still of the belief that 67 percent of this bank should be sold to a third party,” Nograles said.

“What we have done in the past is that we used moral suasion,” he said, in describing PDIC’s approach to convince the Chung, Nubla and Luy families to divest from the bank.

In 2004, the government, through the PDIC, extended a P7.64-billion ($378.3 million) financial assistance to rescue PBCom from its financial difficulty.

View the full story in Manila Standard Today.