Loida Lewis, Templeton join forces in bid to acquire PNB

A group headed by Filipina-American multibillionaire Loida Nicolas Lewis and Hong Kong-based Templeton Asset Management Ltd., along with a North American financial institution, will join forces in a bid to acquire control of losing Philippine National Bank (PNB).

"Templeton is part of us now," Lewis said in an interview after the PNB annual stockholders' meeting yesterday.

In a separate interview, Templeton executive vice president Allan Lam said there is still no final agreement if they will bid together with Lewis' group. "It is one of the options we are looking at," Lam told reporters. Global fund manager Templeton Asset Management Ltd. holds a12.9-percent stake in PNB.

Lewis said a consortium is being formed to join the bidding for PNB scheduled on June 9.

Lewis, a native of Sorsogon, said she became a stockholder of PNB only last April when she started accumulating PNB shares through the local stock market.

She said the consortium will be composed of two groups. The first one will be the financial institution while the second group will be represented by Filipinos in the United States who have "achieved the American dream."

"It has been an emotional attachment. All of us, including myself and my family, want to see PNB regain its previous status of being the premier bank of the Philippines," Lewis said, when asked why she suddenly became interested in buying PNB.

"I have plans to make PNB great again," she said.

This group of US-based Filipinos, Lewis said, believes on a mission inspired by the slogan "Balik Yaman Para sa Bayan." "I will encourage them (Filipinos based in the US) that this is the right time to invest in the Philippines," she stressed.

Lewis, who was described by the minority shareholders of PNB as "the savior of PNB," gained prominence in the US after she inherited TLC Beatrice, a snack-food, beverage and grocery-store conglomerate, from her intense and charismatic late husband Reginald Lewis.

In May last year, however, Lewis liquidated TLC Beatrice which at its peak in 1996, according to Fortune magazine, had sales of $2.2 billion and was listed No. 512 in Fortune's 1,000 Top Corporations. It was the highest position ever attained by a black-managed company.

Lewis said her group is also looking at the possibility of tying up with a local-based bank like the Yuchengo-owned Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) to strengthen their bid for the bleeding bank.

RCBC was one of the three bidders which pre-qualified for PNB's auction on June 9. The other pre-qualified bidder was Le Bong Tanduy, an Indonesian firm with a tie-up with a US financial institution.

She said the group has already contracted the services of ATR, an international investment firm, to be their financial advisor.

Lewis expressed optimism that with her mission, their group will win the battle for the country's former premier bank.

The government owns 30 percent of PNB with taipan Lucio Tan owning 46 percent and the PNB pension fund accounting for four percent. Under an agreement forged earlier, the three parties will be selling their combined 80 percent share as a single block in the June 9 bidding. -