Unlike Ongpin, Gatchalian’s slot-machine operations win Pagcor extension
Hotel and property tycoon William Gatchalian’s slot-machine operations, whose lease renewal had been left hanging by the P-Noy-era Pagcor, have been quietly given a new lease of life.
Like the nationwide e-Games parlor chain of property and gaming tycoon Roberto Ongpin, the franchise of Gatchalian’s electronic gaming operations at the University Park Mall Building in Santa Cruz, Manila had expired, almost simultaneously with Ongpin’s PhilWeb.
But, unlike Ongpin’s, Gatchalian’s lease with the state gaming regulator, Pagcor, has been extended up to the end of the year. A Pagcor official confirmed the lease of the Sta. Cruz gaming mall, along busy Avenida Rizal, has been renewed “month-to-month” until the end of the year.
The father of newly-elected Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, along with Valenzuela Rep. Weslie and Mayor Rexlon, the elder Gatchalian has another, bigger slot-gaming operations in Cebu and Mactan cities.
But those operations, unlike the Sta. Cruz business, are part of the larger hotel-casino complexes that offer live dealer-orchestrated card and other table games.
The Pagcor lease on the Sta. Cruz operations ended last June 30, while the Cebu and Mactan’s leases, along with another Gatchalian casino at the Manila Pavilion hotel, would end on Dec. 31 this year.
Unlike Ongpin’s PhilWeb, which designed and operated the e-Games, the elder Gatchalian is basically a landlord, with the Pagcor-operated gaming business and the tenant hotels and buildings subsumed under the listed Waterfront Philippines.
The slot machines, called “one-armed bandits” before the push-button era, are all being leased from a US supplier by a British Virgin Island company, Dynamo Atlantic Limited.
But the little-known Dynamo Atlantic may face a bigger, tougher regulatory challenge not from Pagcor, but from a lady with bigger clanking cojones no other than Duterte’s Environment Secretary Gina Lopez.
According to Australian regulatory disclosures, Dynamo Atlantic has acquired the nickel mining rights of the Perth-based Pelican Resources on Sibuyan island, a forested isle off Romblon that has been dubbed by environmentalists as the Galapagos of Asia.
Apparently even the hardy Australian prospectors found the local community too hostile -- at least one anti-mining activist, a town councilor no less, had already been murdered -- that they posthaste retreated from the island.
Together with their local partners collectively identified as All-Acacia Resources Inc., the Aussie group sold in late 2015 their Sibuyan mining claims to Dynamo Atlantic for A$4.7 million, plus 2.5 percent royalty on net income of the future mining operations.
But that, as they say, is another story.
Robredo’s travel funds also squeezed
Leni Robredo may have to continue taking the bus to Bicol longer.
Not only has the proposed 2017 budget of Office of the Vice President been slashed, but the office’s travel allowance for next year has also been reduced to P37 million from this year’s nearly P60 million. That’s almost a 40-percent reduction, amid looming higher gas prices and higher excise tax imposition.
In all, the OVP budget for next year has been whittled down to P428 million from this year’s transition budget of P500 million, a P72 million reduction.
According to Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, Robredo was “very happy” even with the smaller budget, since the two housing agencies that she supervises, HUDCC and HLURB, will have their respective budgets boosted by next year. Hmmm, let’s do the math. HUDCC: P122 million (2016), P134 million (2017). HLURB: P188 million (2016), P235 million (2017). Total budget increases for HUDCC and HLURB for 2017: P59 million.
Money talks
• The 26-year-old sister of Double Dragon billionaire boss Edgar “Injap” Sia II, Rizza Marie Joy, has come a long way herself from their Iloilo roots just over a decade ago, having acquired her own ticket to Manila’s high society, a Manila Polo Club share under her very own name.
And speaking of the Manila Polo Club, luxury car dealer Benedicto Coyiuto, a gentler version of his father, insurance tycoon and Porsche-Audit importer/distributor Robert Coyiuto Jr., has just been elected director of the country’s most-exclusive social club.
• Celebrity couple-chefs Rolando Laudico and wife Jacqueline Anne have lost their tectonic fight for, and apparently are no longer connected with, Chef Laudico Guevarra’s, the Filipino buffet restaurant on San Juan’s P. Guevarra St. whose main financier and owner is one “Timothy Go” of Seven Plates Inc.
Heard through the grapevine
The unresolved shareholders’ feud among the Pascual cousins at the ADP Pharma and Pascual Pharma companies have spilled from the boardroom over to the management ranks, costing the job of the vice president for finance.
The officer, Zenie Moreno, has now sued the company before the National Labor Relations Commission, claiming her previous employer had withheld even her 13th month and modest retirement package.
Worse, the finance officer has written the company, threatening to disclose during the NLRC hearings the alleged finagling that she had to resort to that could impact on the P600-million, unsecured promissory notes being held by a consortium of creditor banks.
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