RCBC sells stake in realty unit

MANILA, Philippines - Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), the banking arm of the Yuchengco Group, has sold its stake in RCBC Realty Corp. to the consortium of Pan Malayan Management and Investment Corp. and House of Investments (HI), the bank said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).

RCBC informed the PSE that it would be disposing its 34.8 percent stake in the realty firm for a maximum amount of P5.48 billion. Pan Malayan and HI are both investment vehicles of the Yuchengco Group. RCBC Realty is a joint venture between RCBC and the Government (of Singapore) Investment Corp.

Majority-owned by RCBC Land Inc., RCBC Realty primarily engages in managing and developing real estate infrastructure projects. The company’s maiden project is the RCBC Plaza, which is RCBC’s corporate headquarters.

The RCBC board, in its meeting held March 25, also gave its go-signal to declare P1 per share cash dividends to its shareholders worth a total P1.14 billion. The record date for the cash declaration has yet to be set and would need approval of regulators.

RCBC recently sold P4.8 billion worth of non-performing assets (NPAs) to the Philippine Asset Growth One Inc., a special purpose company spearheaded by the International Finance Corp., the private sector investment arm of the World Bank; and partnered with OSK Holdings Berhad and Altus Transactional Services Inc.

RCBC president and chief executive officer Lorenzo V. Tan said the sale of the NPAs, a product of the 1997 Asian crisis, allows the bank to free up more funds for lending.

Also recently, RCBC made a formal signing with IFC wherein RCBC issued 45.15 million common shares amounting to $100 million to IFC Capitalization (Equity) Fund, a global equity and subordinated debt fund founded by IFC and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JICA).

This development will boost the bank’s total Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio (CAR) to 11.5 percent.