PBCom seeks upgrade to UKB status

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Bank of Communications (PBCom) will seek a license from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to upgrade into a universal bank as it expects to get out of rehabilitation soon.

PBCom, which has a license to engage in regular commercial banking, is now 68 percent owned by the group of businessman Roberto V. Ongpin. Of this, about 35 percent is held by ISM Communications Corp.

ISM sold last year its remaining 37.7-percent stake in Eastern Communications to Vega Telecom, a subsidiary of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), for a total consideration of P1.5 billion, to channel its resources to support its investment in PBCom.

The consortium led by ISM won the bid to acquire 97 percent of PBCom for P4.68 billion.

In November 2011, the BSP and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) confirmed the selection of ISM as the qualified strategic third-party investor in PBCom, a requirement imposed by the regulators when it extended a financial assistance package to the bank in 2004.

Soon after the takeover was formalized and the acquisition was completed, two of the former owners of the bank, namely the Chung and Nubla families, reinvested their proceeds from the sale into PBCom. This brought down the stake of Ongpin’s group in the bank to 68 percent.

ISM officials said that right now, PBCom’s capitalization is at P4.8 billion. To be a universal bank, the minimum capitalization is around P5 billion.

ISM president Eric Recto confirmed that the direction for PBCom is to become a universal bank. “That is the next step, to become a universal bank.”

He said they plan to make the existing branch network more robust in all facets. PBCom has 64 branches nationwide.

He revealed that with this year being PBCom’s third year of profitability, they expect to soon get out of PDIC’s financial assistance.

Meanwhile, Recto noted that the success of ISM is based on the turnaround of PBCom as well as the continuing improvement of Acentic.

ISM, together with its affiliate PhilWeb Corp., own 65 percent of Acentic GmbH, an established in-room technology system provider to over 134,000 hotel rooms across Europe.

Ongpin said plans are for Acentic to have a presence in all countries in Southeast Asia. Acentic currently provides in-room entertainment to two hotels in the Philippines, one of which is Hotel Intercontinental.

Meanwhile, Recto emphasized that their prognosis for Acentic is positive despite the continuing recession in Europe.