Henry Sy takes seat as director of SMC

Retail tycoon Henry Sy Sr. formally took over his post as director in the 15-man board of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), nearly two months after orchestrating the purchase of a huge block of the food and beverage conglomerate’s shares at the stock market.

In its regular board meeting last Friday, the SMC board elected Sy, the patriach of the SM Group, as director to take over the board seat vacated by lawyer Gabriel Villareal, a close associate of SMC chairman and CEO Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. and a board director since 1998.

Sy’s entry into the SMC board was made possible by the block sale last Sept. 12 of 175 million Class A common shares at P55 each, or a total value of P9.625 billion, at the Philippine Stock Exchange.

SM Investments Corp., the investment arm of the SM Group, bought the shares from the holdings of the SMC Employees Retirement Plan, for an equivalent of 6.2 percent of the total outstanding stocks of SMC. Sy is chairman of SM Investments Corp.

"San Miguel is an excellent company, with a proven track record of achievements. We are pleased to have made this acquisition and are confident that it is a good investment for us," Sy said.

Sy’s entry into SMC will also strengthen the fusion and synergy between a food and beverage company and a shopping mall chain – both market leaders in their respective fields.

In the first nine months of this year, SMC’s consolidated revenue reached P99 billion, 16 percent better than the past year, as its new acquisitions added more muscle to the group’s sales volume. On the other hand, the company’s consolidated net income of P4.56 billion was still 4.7 percent less than the P4.787 billion net earnings a year earlier, although this was already an improvement from the 20 percent income drop during the first semester, as SMC incurred additional costs related to the group-wide integration brought about by the acquisitions.

Last year, SMC went on a buying binge with its repurchase of a controlling stake in Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines Inc., followed by the buyout of Pure Foods Corp. and Cosmos Bottling Corp. from the Ayalas and Concepcions, respectively.

Aside from Sy and Cojuangco, the other board directors of SMC are: vice chairman and president Ramon Ang; former Solicitor General and Justice Minister Estelito Mendoza; Manuel Cojuangco; Inigo Zobel; Naomichi Asano and Shigeki Ota of Japan’s Kirin Brewery; GSIS president and GM Winston Garcia; SSS president and CEO Corazon de la Paz; and the five government nominees for the Coconut Industry Investment Fund – Pacifico Fajardo, Menardo Jimenez, Hector Hofilena, Leo Alvez and Juan Santos.