No more passbooks for savings accounts

Did you know 1: As part of his learning curve, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves requires all memos – even those written by his Undersecretaries under his instructions – to pass through his desk.

As a result, Gary Teves’ desk is beginning to look like a black hole.

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Did you know 2: Lopez Group chairman Oscar Lopez still hikes at his age. Why, he even has a plant endemic to the Sierra Madre which has been named after him.

Check out the Edinburg Journal of Botany in Scotland.

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Bank of the Philippine Islands no longer issues passbooks for savings accounts. All you get is an ATM card.

If you need a record of your monthly transactions, you can request for an updated printout.

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Did you know 3: Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla doesn’t own a car of his own and he still lives in his old house in Quezon City.

A teacher by training, Mr. Lotilla hasn’t been getting good marks lately from industry players, which claim the country is currently facing a price crisis (where the price of gasoline is rising) and not an oil crisis (where there is a shortage of oil).

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There’s a business paper financed by insurance man Antonio Cabangon-Chua, which will be launched next Friday. There are also talks that a group is talking to former key editors of BusinessWorld to set up a third business paper.

Right now, there is only one business paper, BusinessWorld, which was co-founded by Raul Locsin and his wife, Leticia Locsin. Mr. Locsin died about two years ago and Ms. Locsin passed away last Wednesday.

Effective control of BusinessWorld lies with the BusinessWorld Publishing Corp.’s provident fund. This is because, sometime in the 1990s, the Locsins transferred their shares to the employees’ provident fund, which, in turn, annually hand over the proxies to Mr. Locsin, who served as the paper’s publisher and editor until his death. His widow also served in the same capacity until her death.

As everybody knows, 30 percent of the paper’s shares are held by the heirs of Enrique Zobel, whose money was accepted by Mr. Locsin only on the condition that EZ would be a passive investor.

A niggling number of shares are held by former and existing BusinessWorld employees, many of whom joined the paper on day one.

Right now, the oldest board member is Bankers Association of the Philippines president and concurrent Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. corporate vice-chairman Cesar Virata. Mr. Virata and Mr. Locsin go back a long way, even before Mr. Virata served as Finance Minister and then Prime Minister during the term of President Marcos.