State-run Land Bank of the Philippines said Monday it issued “fresh offer letters” to all shareholders of Philippine Dealing System and Holdings Corp. to acquire a majority stake in the fixed-income exchange after the Philippine Stock Exchange dropped its takeover plan.
LandBank president Alex Buenaventura said at the sidelines of an event at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas the bank opted to send letters to PDS shareholders again, “because the first round which we did last March, not too many accepted our offer.”
“We reissued another offer letter last Friday. That’s for a 30-day period for the same amount of price P360 per share,” Buenaventura said.
He said the bank had issued offer letters to all shareholders but only one accepted. He did not identify the one that accepted the offer because of a confidentiality agreement.
“We’re quite confident because the PSE has already pulled out from the intent to acquire majority of PDS so that brings LandBank as the only interested party now. Our offer is P360, which is higher than their offer before at P320 and our offer is in cash, PSE’s offer was in stocks,” Buenaventura said.
Buenaventura said with PSE pulling out from the plan, many PDS shareholders would be encouraged to sell to LandBank this time. He said LandBank remained interested in buying the shares at P360 apiece, as stated in the reissued letters to PDS shareholders.
Buenventura said earlier LandBank, the fourth-largest lender in terms of assets as of end-2017, would spend around P1.5 billion to acquire a 66.67-percent stake in PDS. He said there were 6,250,000 total shares in PDS.
He said during the bank’s board meeting on Feb. 27, 2018 that the board unanimously approved the proposal to acquire 66.67 percent of the outstanding PDS shares at P360 per share payable in cash.
Buenaventura said the unanimous approval was made in support of the government’s program for financial inclusion.
Buenaventura said the P1.5-billion acquisition cost for 66.67 percent of PDS would come from LandBank’s existing capital. LandBank’s total capital expanded 23 percent year-on-year P104.59 billion as of end-2017.
The bank booked a net income of P14.05 billion in 2017, up 4 percent from P13.58 billion in 2016 on the strength of core businesses. LandBank is the largest provider of loans to small farmers and fishers, cooperatives and local government units.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III earlier expressed optimism that LandBank would acquire 66.67 percent of PDS.
Buenaventura said LandBank had already applied for a regulatory relief with the Securities and Exchange Commission to exempt it from the 20-percent ownership cap.
