BF plans rights offering
by Elena R. Torrijos

The board of the Banco Filipino Savings and Mortgage Bank has approved an increase in the bank's authorized capital to P8 billion from P5 billion and a stock rights offering to enable the bank to become a universal bank, it said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

On March 25 last year, the Monetary Board, the policy-making body of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, approved in principle BF's application for expanded commercial bank (unibank) authority.

Upon request of BF, the Monetary Board gave the thrift bank a six-month extension or until the end of the year, to comply with certain requirements, including meeting the P4.95 billion minimum capital requirement for universal banks.

The second extension of the approval of BF's universal bank status would be automatically revoked unless all of the conditions are met within the same period, the BSP said.

Under the stock rights offering approved by the BF board, shareholders could subscribe to the bank's unissued shares at a ratio of two shares for every share held.

The bank pegged the subscription price at P100 per share "to be paid in cash or in the form of real estate properties acceptable to the bank."

During its meeting last Thursday, the board also passed a resolution calling for the payment of the bank's subscription receivables of P40.21 million from its stockholders.

A committee created by the board would determine the due date for payment of the subscription receivables, the bank said.

Banco Filipino vice president and corporate secretary Francisco Rivera earlier said the bank's capital base was at P3.2 billion as of July. Rivera explained that Banco Filipino wanted to be a unibank to be able to develop its huge inventory of real estate assets.

He said the Aguirre family had a stake in Banco Filipino, but its major shareholders were corporations, one of which was Metropolitan Development Corp.

Banco Filipino has claimed P18 billion in damages against the defunct central bank while the Central Bank-Board of Liquidators itself is charging the bank P2.65 billion in principal debts.