7 brokers to be elected directors at PSE polls

With its conversion last year into a stock corporation, the demutualized Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will have its first taste of voting by shares as it holds its annual board elections today.

The 184 broker-members will elect from a list of 10 candidates the seven broker-directors needed to fill up the remaining slate in the 15-man board which, by virtue of the Securities Regulation Code passed in August 2000, is now majority controlled by non-brokers.

Contesting the PSE chairmanship to be vacated by Felipe Yap are two prominent re-electionist stockbrokers: Robert Coyiuto Jr. and Vivian Yuchengco. Coyiuto, who heads his own R. Coyiuto Securities, was the first president of the PSE in 1992 and its chairman in 1994. Yuchengco, of The First Resources Management & Securities Corp., on the other hand, was president of the pre-unification Makati Stock Exchange.

Joining Coyiuto’s slate are fellow re-electionists Eddie Gobing of Lucky Securities and Harry Liu of Summit Securities, along with Federico Lim of Belson Securities and Edwin Luy of Triton Securities.

Yuchengco’s party, meanwhile, consist of Alicia Rita Arroyo of RCBC Securities, Marita Limlingan of Regina Capital and Joseph Madrid of Philippine Equity Partners.

Only Senen Magtoto of BPI Capital is running as an independent candidate in the 10-man field.

Earlier, the current PSE board appointed the eight non-broker directors, led by PSE president Ernest Leung, for a one-year term. They include incumbent directors Eugenio Lopez III, Mario Camacho, Fr. Joaquin Bernas and Cayetano Paderanga; while former Customs Commissioner Tomas Apacible, former Petron president Monico Jacob and banker Peter Favila join the board for the first time, replacing Washington Sycip, Patricio Lim and Manuel Pangilinan.

Under the SRC, the PSE board is required to constitute a majority on non-brokers to represent the interests of the listed companies, investors and other market participants. There used to be only three non-brokers representatives to the board, but this has been expanded to eight, with only the remaining seven seats reserved for brokers.

Under the PSE rules, the elected PSE directors, both brokers and non-brokers, are given a maximum term of two consecutive years to sit in the board. They can only run for re-election after serving a one-year hiatus.

In the voting process, each member – either by himself or by proxy – can exercise the right to vote his allotted 50,000 shares from demutualization. In the ballot sheet, he is given two options to choose on the mode of voting: first, by checking the names of the candidates he prefers, or by specifying the number of votes for each candidate.

If he takes the first option, then each of the candidates chosen (seven or less) will equally divide the maximum allowable votes, in this case the 350,000 shares (50,000 shares times seven). A ballot with more than seven names with check marks will be considered a spoiled vote.

For the second option, the voter can just assign the votes to each candidate to spread out his shareholdings based on weight, which means a chosen candidate can get just one share while others can get more than 50,000 shares, of the remaining 349,999 shares.