BAP selling PDS stake ‘at right conditions’

MANILA, Philippines — The Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP) is keen on selling its stake in the Philippine Dealing System Holdings Corp. (PDS) to the Philippine Stock Exchange Inc. (PSE) at the right conditions.

The PSE is hoping to wrap up negotiations with shareholders of the PDS Group, which includes the BAP, within the first half.

“We’re willing to sell at the right conditions,” BAP president and Bank of the Philippine Islands president and CEO Jose Teodoro Limcaoco said.

“They (PSE) have said they want to buy. There’s no price. We’ve engaged an adviser on what the value might be. That’s where we are,” he said.

Monzon earlier told The STAR he is hopeful the valuation work by the parties involved would be completed by May this year.

“I don’t think it’s going to take me one month to negotiate. Hopefully, we can finish all the negotiations by the second quarter,” Monzon said.

The PSE plans to acquire up to 100 percent of the PDS Group, the operator of the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. (PDEx), the country’s sole fixed-income exchange, as part of its goal to integrate the two exchanges.

The PSE currently owns 20.98 percent of the issued and outstanding capital stock of the PDS Group.

Other PDS stockholders include the BAP with more than 28 percent, Singapore Exchange Ltd. with 20 percent, Tata Consultancy Services Asia with eight percent, Whistler Technologies Services Inc. with eight percent and San Miguel Corp. with four percent, among others.

The BAP is the lead organization of universal and commercial banks in the Philippines consisting of 44 member banks, 20 of which are local banks.

Limcaoco said the banks want to have a deeper understanding on how the PSE would govern PDEx if they were to sell their stake in PDS.

“We have to understand the governance of PDEx, right? PDEx is the bond exchange. The biggest customers there are the banks. We want to understand how that would operate,” Limcaoco said.

The PSE said the resulting integration of the country’s equity and fixed-income exchanges would allow for the delivery of more efficient and more types of products, services and better risk management systems for financial services.