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The car mechanic-turned-president of San Miguel Corp. has finally emerged as the owner of an 11.03-percent bloc of the conglomerate, with a market value of over P41.27 billion.
According to a financial prospectus released by San Miguel Monday, president Ramon S. Ang as of July 5 owned 368,517,169 SMC shares, a quantum leap from two months earlier when Ang was reported as the direct owner of only 376,653 shares.
The prospectus was issued by San Miguel in conjunction with its ongoing roadshow for an P80-billion preferred share offering to local investors.
The bulk of Ang's shareholdings are being held by a Cayman Islands company, Master Year Limited, San Miguel said.
Master Year emerged in late June as the buyer of an 11-percent San Miguel block, carved out from the 17-percent block divestment of San Miguel chairman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr.
On the other hand, San Miguel's biggest shareholder, Top Frontier Investments Holdings Inc. saw its shareholdings shrink from 51.57 percent in end-2011 to only 40.33 percent by July 5.
Headquartered at the 5th floor of the Enzo Building on Buendia, where the Jaguar showroom used to occupy the ground floor, Top Frontier lists Ayala heir Iñigo Zobel as chairman, Eric Recto as president and Marcos-era finance minister Roberto Ongpin, Ang, and San Miguel chief financial officer Ferdinand Constantino as directors.
Incidentally, because of the sheer size of the San Miguel offering, the gross underwriting fees alone already amount to over P645 million, the lion's share going to sole issue manager HSBC.
Tan as ghost-buster
Despite his Fujian roots, taipan Andrew Tan is apparently not bothered by ethnic superstitions such as the belief that the auspicious opening day for a store is any day between a new moon and a full moon.
Neither is the billionaire-chairman of the Megaworld empire heeding the traditional belief that no business venture should be launched during the so-called Chinese "ghost month."
The developer is in fact defying the two superstitions by not only opening on a waning moon but launching his Lucky Chinatown mall in Binondo with week-long celebrations starting on August 15, two days before the actual start of this year's ghost season.
For the non-Chinese reader, the seventh lunar month is supposed to be the time when the gates of hell are sprung open for the whole month to allow ghosts and spirits to visit their families and also, more frightening, to look for victims and capture their souls.
Money-go-round
• Toyota Philippines founder Ricardo Silverio Sr. has lost round two of his fight for the control of his and his late wife's Urdaneta Village house. The Court of Appeals last month upheld a Makati Regional Trial Court decision allowing the issuance of a new title to replace the old, presumably missing one.
The Urdaneta house is under the name of Pilipinas Development Corp., whose president happens to be Silverio's namesake son, Ricardo Jr., and who is claiming the multi-million property as his inheritance from his late mother.
Ricardo Jr. sought a new title after discovering that what he had been holding all along was a spurious copy.
• Not content with the three lost working days in Metro Manila last week because of floods, party-list Rep. Jose Ping-ay is pressing PNoy to declare October 1 a non-working holiday, to celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives.
Heard through the grapevine
An inheritance feud among the headstrong boys of the late Sen. Magnolia Antonino that has been kept under the media's radar is now threatening to spill over to the public arena.
Email Vic Agustin at cocktales_tv5@yahoo.com
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