MANILA, Philippines — Integrated telco PLDT Inc. is expected to fill up the vacancies in its board by the middle of this year as it reorganizes its ranks to recover from the financial and reputational damage caused by a recent budget fiasco.
PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan is heading the nomination committee tasked to handpick the candidates vying to lead the financial and network units of the telco giant.
With Pangilinan himself in charge, PLDT president and CEO Alfredo Panlilio expects the firm to appoint a new chief financial officer, chief procurement officer, and network head within the next three months.
“He [Pangilinan] is always part of the decision-making [body] and he also chairs the nomination committee. It goes through that committee and it is brought up to that board for final approval,” Panlilio said in an interview with reporters.
In the meantime, Panlilio said the finance, network, and procurement departments are reforming their procedures to prevent a repeat of the budget overspend. PLDT has named temporary heads for these units to ensure the continuity of the business even in the face of a boardroom cleanup.
“Obviously, there is a lot of cleaning up in the network, in records, all of that is happening, and they [departments] are very busy on that now,” Panlilio said.
Last week, PLDT announced that it had parted ways with five of its key executives who managed its finances at the time the Pangilinan-led telco sustained a capital overrun.
Among those who departed PLDT are its senior vice president, chief financial officer, and chief risk management officer Annabelle Chua and senior vice president and network head Mario Tamayo, both of whom took an early retirement.
Fitch Group research unit CreditSights said PLDT has to fill in the vacancies in its board as soon as possible to keep daily operations running. It also warned that PLDT may find it difficult to match the kind of experience it used to have in the likes of Chua, who served for more than 20 years in the telco giant.
Last year PLDT shook the capital markets when it uncovered a P48 billion budget overspend in capital expenditures between 2019 and 2022, although that amount has gone down to P33 billion as a result of negotiation with major vendors.
For the meantime, PLDT has named officers in charge to the roles vacated by its C-suite officials to keep the business running as it searches for permanent replacements.