February 6, 2008

THE Philippine Stock Exchange has imposed a new set of fines on the Locsin-Poblador group for having repeatedly failed to submit financial reports of the Philcomsat Holdings Corp. to the bourse.

PSE disclosure chief Pete Malabanan said the PHC was being fined a total of P435,000 for the non-submission of the 2006 annual report, as well as for missing three quarterly reports for 2007.

The irony of the monetary penalties is that it is now the new Malacanang nominees headed by Ramon “RJ” Jacinto and retired Justice Santiago Ranada who are being made to shoulder the penalties of the dismissed Malacanang directors led by Locsin, while the group of Free Press publisher Enrique Locsin and PHC “chairman” Concepcion Poblador, aided by friendly Makati judges, continues to hang on to the about P500 million to P800 million in company funds. Read the rest of this entry »

February 3, 2008

HE may be laboring under the shadow of his more famous, more controversial big brother, but it is beginning to look like Jose “Bonito” Singson Jr. is a sharper businessman than Luis “Chavit” Singson.

Bonito last week signed with Robinsons Land president Frederick Go a joint-venture agreement for the Gokongwei real estate company to develop Singson’s 65-hectare property right outside Vigan into a Spanish-inspired township, just like the capital town’s historic district.

With urban planning designed by architect Felino Palafox, the township, called El Pueblo, will also feature an eight-to-ten hectare commercial center, with a mall, a convention center, and a call center as main anchors. Read the rest of this entry »

February 3, 2004

Faced with a string of money-laundering charges, Malacanang’s Philcomsat Holdings holdover director Enrique Locsin has hired the public relations consultant of Bangko Sentral Gov. Amando Tetangco Jr., paying the crisis PR consultant at least P3.1 million for a three-month contract, according to recovered Philcomsat documents.

One of the first counter-attacks that the PR consultant, Resty Perez and Co., executed was to craft and place negative advertisements against Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera and the Malacanang search committee, hitting them for dropping Locsin from the list of new Arroyo nominees to the cash-flush company.

With a new set of Malacanang directors coming in, Locsin publicly admitted that he and PHC “chairman” Concepcion Poblador transferred untold hundreds of millions of company funds to unknown destinations for “safekeeping.” Read the rest of this entry »

February 1, 2008

MALACAÑANG’S stay-in nominee at Philcomsat Holdings Corp., Enrique Locsin, has been promising that the estimated P500 million to P800 million company funds that his group has stashed on the eve of their replacements are still intact, safe guarded, and being audited.

What the Free Press publisher had economized with the facts is that the group’s own handpicked auditor, Virgilio R. Santos & Co., has been suspended for a year by the Securities and Exchange Commission because he had allowed the cooking of the PHC books.

LOCSIN WITH CONCEPCION ‘TATA’

Santos, who was engaged by the Locsin group beginning 2002 as PHC external auditor, “significantly understated [the company’s] net loss by 42.52 percent in 2005 and 246.21 percent in 2004″ by allowing about P92 million in legal and PR expenses to be booked as “advances to affiliates,” the SEC’s Office of the General Accountant ruled. Read the rest of this entry »

January 30, 2008

NOW we have an idea why San Miguel Corp. president Ramon Ang prefers to stay at the Four Seasons whenever he is in Hong Kong.

Ang wants to build a Four Seasons-like hotel fronting Greenbelt in the abandoned GSIS property on Legaspi Street, in a joint venture by the San Miguel Properties with the Government Service Insurance System.

Ang, who already controls the bay-side Manila Diamond, said the joint venture wants to hire the Four Seasons architect, the Hong Kong-based Rocco Design, for the planned Greenbelt hotel.

ANG

But Ang apparently wants the planned local hotel to even top the luxe Hong Kong hotel, at least in expansiveness. Read the rest of this entry »

January 30, 2008

Saying that “the ombudsman does not run the paper,” referring to readers’ advocate Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, Inquirer editor-in-chief Leticia Jimenez-Magsanoc has thumbed down Tirol’s recommendation to suspend two editors and one reporter for a recent page-one boo-boo.

Tirol, along with opinion editor Jorge Aruta and associate editor Abelardo Ulanday, had recommended the suspension of managing editor Jose Ma. Nolasco, with whom Aruta has been feuding for years, and two others because of the boner.

The talk-of-the-trade embarrassment was caused when our favorite broadsheet-tabloid headlined that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was present when envelopes-full of cash were handed out in Malacañang to pro-administration local officials. Read the rest of this entry »

January 28, 2008

The first big Chinoy wedding of the year was held all the way in Hong Kong yesterday, with the Coyiutos, of the insurance and Porsche-Audi fame, and the Gos of Sugarland fortune formally sealing their alliance with the marriage of Benedicto Coyiuto and Dana Richelle Go.

Despite gray skies and a brisk 13 degree-centigrade weather, the 200-strong contingent from Manila brought tropical cheer and a media buzz to the otherwise private ceremony, with the presence of deposed President Joseph Estrada as a wedding sponsor generating print and video coverage from the Associated Press, aside from the usual Philippine media.

No less than Cebu Cardinal Ricardo Vidal officiated the 2 p,m. wedding at the 120-year-old Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, with Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, who had civilly married the young couple back home, quietly watching on the sidelines. Read the rest of this entry »

January 28, 2008

Edsa I and II advocate Ramon del Rosario Jr. thankfully took the first Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong on Saturday. Had he opted for the second flight, he would have been on the same section as former President Estrada, suffering from a sudden attack of stiff neck and perhaps near-sightedness.

As it turned out, the former Ramos finance secretary, along with the entire Del Rosario family, flew to the Chinese territory for the weekend to celebrate their mother’s birthday.

Someone who saw Milagros del Rosario swears that the matriarch was beaming at the prospects of a rare out-of-town celebration with her entire brood, probably even looking forward to taking a few furtive bites of crispy Peking duck skin despite the doctor’s advice. Read the rest of this entry »

January 25, 2008

FREE PRESS publisher and Masonic leader Enrique “Henry” Locsin has been reinstated as a Malacanang nominee to the publicly-listed Philcomsat Holdings, on the strength of a political commitment by President Arroyo to Locsin’s younger brother, Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., according to persons involved in the negotiations.

Henry Locsin was seen waiting at the Manila Peninsula lobby yesterday morning, as the new Philcomsat Holdings board were meeting in a function room, amid indications that he had already abandoned the Sandiganbayan lawsuit questioning his group’s replacement.

In the Sandigan the other day, Henry Locsin’s partner and main complainant, socialite Concepcion Poblador, was also a no-show, prompting the anti-graft court to reset the hearing to January 31. Read the rest of this entry »

January 25, 2008

After the unceremonious retirement of Ethel Soliven as lifestyle editor of the Manila Bulletin, it is the turn of the Philippine Daily Inquirer to institute a rigodon in its own home.

According to the grapevine, Thelma San Juan is poised to return as lifestyle editor of our favorite broadsheet-tabloid, vice Chelo Banal-Formoso, who is being given another assignment at the behest of the owners, the Rufino-Prietos, who apparently want to improve the bottom-line contribution of the section.

San Juan was the lifestyle editor of the Inquirer until she was pirated by ABS-CBN Publishing nearly eight years ago. After growing the two-magazine, P30-million-a-year business into a 15-title empire now grossing P400 million a year, San Juan left the Lopez subsidiary late last year amid chemistry issues with her new boss, Jose Ramon “Monchet” Olives. Read the rest of this entry »