MANNY V. Pangilinan, the fair-haired boy of First Pacific and financial expert of the Salim Group of Indonesia who barged into the Philippine business scene with braggadocio, buying into, and buying out one huge business enterprise after another, seems to be on the way out. On the way out at least from the Salim group, now headed by Anthoni Salim who has taken control of the conglomerate with the death of his father-founder Sudono Salim, with whom MVP had a very comfortable and trusting business relationship when he was alive. What we perceives as MVP’s fall from grace both from his investors, financial backers, and government patrons, is directly proportional to the rate by which the financial wizard from Ateneo and Harvard is trying to downsize or sell losing businesses. Take the case of ABC Channel 5. Management last week sent an email to all employees, offering a voluntary resignation package that shocked many inside the company, and shocked many more in the television and broadcast industry, considering that not too long ago, MVP embarked on a failed attempt to take over GMA 7. The emailed memo from Ray C. Espinosa, President and CEO of ABC 5, is addressed to all TV5 employees. It is about a Special Limited Voluntary Resignation Program (SLVRP) which is “important so that we can survive and fit into the highly competitive television and radio industry.” Espinosa explains the SLVRP thus: “SPECIAL because this is a non-recurring, non-precedent setting offer of a financial resignation package; hence, any future voluntary resignation shall not be entitled to this financial resignation package. LIMITED because this is only for a limited period within which employees may apply for inclusion. VOLUNTARY because any interested employee has to apply in writing for inclusion in the SLVRP, subject to the sole discretion and approval by management, taking into account business exigencies. This means that the company shall have the final decision as to whose application shall be approved or not. RESIGNATION because all employees whose applications for inclusion are approved by management shall be considered to have voluntarily resigned.” Management said the special resignation package is two months for every year of service, a fraction of at least six months shall be considered as one year subject to withholding taxes. Espinosa said all employees who are approved for inclusion in the SLVRP shall also be required to execute a Receipt, Release and Quitclaim in favor of the company. The employment of the qualified employee shall cease following Management’s approved effectivity date. In a subsequent town hall meeting with employees of TV5, Manny Pangilinan was reported to have said that the company is planning to declare bankruptcy. The recent events in TV5 have demoralized its employees and talents, as any corporate retrenchment plan would affect the work force. Even the transfer of all departments to the new TV5 building in Reliance, Mandaluyong City except the Sports news section, is now seldom discussed. The sad state of business malaise prevailing in Channel 5 is replicated in other MVP controlled companies, particularly Philex Mining and Business World. Philex is still haggling with the government in the payment of a P1 billion fine for violation of DENR environment regulations, particularly the contamination of rivers and streams in Northern Luzon due to the mine tailings tragedy just like the one that happened in Marcopper in Marinduque years ago. The mining disaster stopped for several months the operation of Philex, and profits suffered. The case of Business World is reportedly similar to TV5. Losses or low income allegedly necessitated the institution of various labor and financial reforms, and putting the enterprise up for sale remains an option. All these unhappy developments in some of MVP’s investments in the country have taken their toll in Manny’s relationship with his principal financier, the Salim Group of Indonesia. The talk in business circles is that MVP had been very close and enjoyed the unconditional trust of the Group’s founder and alpha male, Sodono Salim, and not so with the son, Anthony or Anthoni Salim. Sources said Anthony Salim reportedly wanted to concentrate the Group’s investment portfolio of some $15 billion in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and India, aside from Indonesia, where business was booming, but the patriotism of MVP got the better of him and pushed the investments in the Philippines. This made sense for a while with Anthony, because PLDT, Smart, Meralco, Metro Pacific and Philex were making money, but when some of the investments floundered, and MVP’s influence on official government policies waned, the young Salim had another thing coming. Sources in business and government circles told OpinYon that if there is one Filipino the Salim Group can trust to fast-track the Tuwid Na Daan ng Tubo (profit road) from the Philippines to Salim’s coffers, it is nobody but Secretary Albert Del Rosario, who was executive chairman of the Hong Kong-based First Pacific Group in 1999. The problem is that Del Rosario is still with the PNoy government, in fact its secretary of foreign affairs. Lately, Malacanang issued a denial to a non-existent story that Secretary Del Rosario is on the way out of DFA. The fearless forecast of OpinYon is that by June 30, when Senator Ed Angara ceases to become senator, there will be a Cabinet revamp that includes the resignation of Del Rosario and the designation of Angara as secretary of foreign affairs, some sort of a payback for his service during the last Congress as member of the cooperative Senate, and his service during the elections, through which his son Sonny made the leap from congressman to senator. Then, Del Rosario, whose association with the Salim Group goes back to the time of Indonesian President Suharto and Sudono Salim, father of Anthoni, could return to the private sector and probably replace MVP as the First Pacific’s lead conductor in the Philippines, and probably in the Asian region. Pangilinan is the managing director of the Hong Kong-based First Pacific Group. After initially going into drug distribution, packaging and real estate development, First Pacific is now into telecommunications, media, mining, power, toll road, water supply, port operation, hospitals, and oil exploration. People would wonder why we arrived at this opinion that Del Rosario wanted to end his service at DFA and move on to an even lucrative job under a huge financial conglomerate called Salim group. An educated and highly articulate guy, why would Secretary Del Rosario take the blame for the loss of three letters by Sultan Jamalul Kiram of the Sultanate of Sulu to President Noynoy Aquino asking the President to include the sultanate in the then ongoing peace talks with the MILF. Del Rosario admitted that it was his fault that he did not act on the Kiram letters. How could he act on them, or how could it be his fault, when these letters were written and sent by Kiram to Malacanang at a time when the DFA Secretary was still Bert Romulo and not him? Also, Del Rosario, who was very active and effective in handling the nation’s problems in the Middle East, helping Filipino overseas workers there, was completely out of the loop in the Sabah debacle, and perceived to be lethargic in the Taiwan incident, all indicative of the fact that he might be considering the end of his term as secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, when he was a player in the Kalayaan islands issue, knew too well whom to talk to – Del Rosario and MVP – about the Chinese business angle of that problem. Trillanes then charged that MVP was fanning Del rosario’s anti-China stand as disclosed in the notes of former Philippine Ambassador to Beijing Sonia Brady. The senator said MVP and Del Rosario were rabble-rousers of sorts against China just to protect the company’s business interest. Now that reports indicate that Del Rosario would be replacing MVP as First Pacific’s country manager in the Philippines, it looks like Trillanes was telling the truth then. This is still another proof that the Salim Group had its stake in that part of Asia that straddles the Philippines and China, and if MVP mishandled the Group’s interest in those islets, could Del Rosario do much, much better? First Pacific has a controlling stake in Forum Energy, which owns a majority of Service Contract No. 72 covering the oil and gas find in Recto Bank if Palawan, an area both claimed by China and the Philippines. Based on Brady’s notes, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile read on the Senate floor last September that Pangilinan wanted to create an event to divert attention from Reed Bank because the gas find there was not substantial. Forum Energy had earlier claimed that it contained the country’s largest gas deposit, a volume way bigger than Malampaya’s. “Mr. Pangilinan asked the Chinese group not to release findings because they needed time to recover their investment first and sell off to another buyer,” Enrile said, reading from the notes taken by Brady during one of her meetings with Trillanes in China. President Aquino earlier named Trillanes his back-channel negotiator working independently of the DFA. Decades ago, the Left had been protesting and shouting Bureaucratic Capitalism, right or wrong, we don’t know, but clearly MVP and Del Rosario have given a face to his otherwise hazy concept pushed by the muddle-headed Jose Ma. Sison.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 23:53:28 +0000
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