24-hour punching bag

SGV & Co. managing partner Cesar Purisima no longer has to go to the Tower Club to exercise. You see, SGV now has a gym – at 100 square meters, really small – at the not-sound-proof second floor (right beside the training rooms).

The gym is open 24 hours, free of charge, to all SGV employees, including those who might want to paste a photo of their boss on the punching bag and work out their anger.

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Well, well. Less than two weeks after winning its first UAAP basketball championship in 14 years, Ateneo de Manila University is already going to press on a commemorative book.

The book’s market – all those rabid alumni, some of whom actually sat right behind the La Salle players’s bench – is said to be much bigger than for a book of Atenean Horacio de la Costa.

Proceeds from the UAAP book – tentatively P500 for the soft bound version and P1,000 for the hard-bound version – will go to the school’s athletic department.

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That IBM purchase of the management consulting business of Price Waterhouse Cooper isn’t expected to significantly affect the Philippine operation of either IBM Phils. or PWC/Cunanan.

Here’s why. The management consulting business is owned by PWC Australia. And IBM Phils. won’t absorb the business (which is mostly with multinationals, anyway.)

As everyone knows, a great part of IBM’s business is now into services rather than in pushing hardware.

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Bank notes 1: Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. president Norberto Nazareno is back in his office after taking two days off for a thorough check up. Early this year, Boy Nazareno went through heart surgery.

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Bank notes 2: Based on the estimates of AIG Credit Card Phil., Inc. the number of working moms in Metro Manila earning at least P20,000 a month is around 800,000.

That number is a big factor in the decision of AIG to launch its own credit card version for women. Unlike HSBC’s Red Card for women (which is run by a man, Rommel del Fierro, who, however, insists he understands what women want by virtue of his wife and his credit card team, AIG’s version called Dolce Vita is managed by a former Avon Phils. executive, Myla Gonzalez.

Ms. Gonzales expects an initial cardholders base of 30,000 in Dolce Vita’s first quarter, which just happens to be the Christmas season.

That’s, of course, an asterisk in the credit card business, which is estimated to have a base of about 3.5 million cardholders. The 3.5 million estimate is on the high side since some cardholders have more than one card.