RFM is SMC’s fourth ballclub

The Philippine Basketball Association last night approved the transfer of the RFM franchise to Cosmos Bottling Corp., in the process allowing San Miguel Corporation to own four of the 10 existing PBA ballclubs.

The decision granting RFM’s request to have its PBA franchise included in the imminent sale of Cosmos to SMC was arrived at after more than two hours of debate in the special board meeting at the Manila Golf Club.

For the transfer to be approved, it needed a two-thirds vote or at least six of nine board members. Purefoods, the 10th member, lost its right to vote after it was purchased by San Miguel Corp. just recently.

Aside from Purefoods and eventually Cosmos, the other ballclubs under the huge SMC umbrella are San Miguel Beer and Ginebra.

"The PBA has approved the request of RFM, paving the way for SMC to own four PBA teams upon finalization of the sale of Cosmos," said PBA commissioner Jun Bernardino.

Bernardino said the meeting went smoothly, although former chairman Wilfred Uytengzu of Alaska Milk said, on his way out of he room, that it was "another dark day for the PBA." Obviously, Alaska voted against the transfer.

Sources said Uytengzu sought two-thirds of 10 votes for the tranfer to be approved and not just two-thirds of nine.

This was debated upon by the board members for an hour.

The board also tackled:

•Tanduay’s sale to FedEx

• imports for next season’s conferences.

Bernardino said the board could not yet act on the FedEx application for membership since the latter has yet to submit certain documents and company profiles that would allow the PBA to look into the long-term financial viability of the applying firm.

Bernardino said another special board meeting will be held Dec. 27 to duscuss the Tanduay franchise sale.

Bernardino added that for the first conference of next year, teams will have an option of fielding either one or two imports regardless of the number of players it would yield to the RP team that will compete in the Asian Games in Pusan, South Korea next year.

National team hae coach Ron Jacobs brought up the idea a couiple of days ago when he proposed that the board changed it sarlie positions of lending 18 players to the two training squads tat will see action in the first two conferences of nex t year.