The go-to-man for banking Pac-Men

To counter the proliferation of counterfeit P500 and P1,000 bills, some public market vendors have purchased the same portable machines that banks use to detect fake bills under untraviolet rays.

Being entrepreneurial, they charge fellow market vendors a minimal fee to make sure the high-denominated bills – no need to check P20s and P50s – being passed by customers are for real.

* * *

Did you know 1: Despite legislation, banks still seem to prefer to sell their non-performing assets themselves rather than to pass them to special purpose vehicles.

For one, the SPVs are expected to demand an extreme haircut or large discount for these NPAs. For another, the banks aren’t exactly willing to publicly admit that they have not fully provisioned for those soured loans.

* * *

Did you know 2: The compensation package at Government Service Insurance System is said to be so generous that a driver earns the monthly equivalent of a manager in a commercial bank.

GSIS is headed by president and general manager Winston Garcia, who is said to be stepping down by end-June because he’s not, uh, popular in certain sectors. After insisting last year that the pension fund insure 80 percent of the insurance requirement of the National Power instead of the usual 20 percent, Mr. Garcia recently insisted that GSIS insure LRT-1 instead of passing it for reinsurance to somebody else.

* * *

Former Bangko Sentral Governor Gabriel Singson seems to be the negotiator of choice of other taipans even though everybody knows he is the best friend – some say, only friend – of JG Summit Holdings majority stockholder John Gokongwei Jr.

Earlier, Gabby Singson did some bridging work for government and Lucio Tan to put together that five-year rehabilitation program of the Philippine National Bank.

And, of course, Mr. Singson was recently only a phone away from both Henry Sy Sr. and Alfonso Yuchengco, resulting in the sale of Al Yuchengco’s stake in China Banking Corp. to Mr. Sy.

Aside from PNB, Mr. Tan is majority owner of another bank, Allied Banking Corp. with the China Bank purchase, Mr. Sy also holds majority shares in two banks, the other one is Banco de Oro Universal Bank. Mr. Sy is in the process of buying the shares of the Social Security System in Equitable PCI Bank.

Mr. Yuchengco is majority owner of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., which can’t seem to keep a chief executive officer for long. Mr. John is the majority owner of Robinsons Savings Bank, which intends to spend more on technology to reach more consumers rather than on buying the branch network of another bank.