P500M-parking lot

Did you know 1: GMA Network, Inc. chairman and chief executive officer Felipe Gozon is still hot by going international although this might have to be done at a much reduced pace than initially targeted and would have to be concentrated on the US mainland because of the aborted initial public offering.

As everybody knows, GMA Network’s competitor, ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. now gets more than 30 percent of its gross revenues from its international market.

* * *

Did you know 2: Headhunter John Clements Consultants Inc., which has been headed for the past two years by a second-generation Dominguez – Ma. Carolina Dominguez – also operates a business process outsourcing business. Specifically, it deals with the payroll of companies which would rather not be bothered with the detailed work involved in calculating how much each employees should get every 15 days.

* * *

Did you know 3: That parking building behind China Banking Corp.’s head office – the one which companies under the Jollibee Foods Corp. umbrella have lucratively monopolized – is expected to be around for only about five years.

Hey, that parking lot is valued at an estimated P500 million and could be put to better use.

Then again, the bank headed by Peter Dee isn’t exactly short on cash. And with the best return on equity ratio in the commercial banking industry last year, major stockholders such as Henry Sy Sr. aren’t complaining either.

* * *

So, who is Noe Ravalo, who is the major collateral damage in the fight (sniper range only) between Asian Institute of Management president Roberto de Ocampo and some tenured members of his faculty?

No, he isn’t a relative of Bobby de Ocampo. If Noet Ravalo were to drop names at all, it would have to be the country’s corporate governance guru Jesus Estanislao, whose sister is Mr. Ravalo’s mom. (There is a connection here, though. Mr. De Ocampo succeeded Mr. Estanislao as chairman and chief executive officer of the Development Bank of the Philippines and then as Finance Secretary).

At an early stage, Mr. Ravalo was diagnosed with meningitis, which has made his left arm totally useless and one leg shorter than the other. Despite that, he was a member of his school’s high school track team.

Like his uncle, Mr. Ravalo also has a postgraduate degree. His was economics while his uncle’s was in theology.

Mr. Ravalo makes the following clarifications on the March 3 column, which basically tackled three issues:

• On the issue that Mr. Ravalo was appointed course director of two seminars jointly organized by AIM and the Asian Development Bank Institute of Japan (whose first president, by the way, was Mr. Estanislao) even though he was not a faculty member of AIM – Mr. Ravalo said he was hired by ADBI, not by AIM.

• On the issue that Mr. Ravalo was obscenely paid (read: much, much higher than AIM faculty rates) for his services – Mr. Ravalo said the numbers were accurate but the payments covered pre-seminar and post-seminar work and not just the seminar proper. All in all, he spent a year on the project.

• On the issue that Mr. Ravalo got outsiders instead of AIM faculty for the seminars – Mr. Ravalo said everybody he asked at AIM either had something else to do or was too old to do it.