Mirant Corp. board okays public offering of RP subsidiary

The board of directors of US-based Mirant Corp. has approved the listing of its Philippine subsidiary, Mirant Philippines Inc. (MPI), in the local stock exchange.

"Latest development is that Mirant Phils. has gotten its head office’s board approval to push through with the local IPO (initial public offering)," Energy Secretary Vincent S. Perez said.

Perez expressed his elation as he noted that MPI is now scouting for a financial advisor to handle its planned public offering. "We have been in close discussion with Mirant Philippines, urging them to go public and my understanding is that they are now in the final process of selecting an underwriter or a financial adviser for their IPO," he said.

The energy chief called this is a welcome development after the successful IPO of Salcon Power Corp. last Monday.

"The Department of Energy (DOE) would like to laud the successful IPO of Salcon Power. We have learned that it is now one of the actively traded stocks in the exchange today," he said.

He said he hoped that the public offering of Salcon would lead to similar undertaking by other oil companies. "This is the first power company to list in the stock exchange since the law (Oil Deregulation Law) was signed and we welcome this development and we hope that it would lead to other power companies to list on the Philippine Stock Exchange," he said.

Mirant Philippines, Inc., formerly Southern Energy Philippines Inc., owns 2,500 MW of installed capacity. Specifically, it owns and operates the 1,218 MW Sual power station in Pangasinan, the 735-MW Pagbilao power station in Quezon, the 210-MW Navotas I and 100 MW Navotas II power stations in Metro Manila and the 15-MW SDC power station in San Ildefonso, Bulacan. It also owns a stake in the soon-to-be-operational 1,200-MW natural gas-fired Ilijan power station.