Prieto passes problem on to RSA
A minority shareholder of the Philippine Daily Inquirer finally managed on Friday to get through, sort of, to Inquirer chairman Marixi Rufino-Prieto.
The shareholder, who shall remain unnamed, had wanted to get some clarity from the señora herself why the Rufino-Prieto clan disposed of their 85 percent stake in the Inquirer Group to San Miguel president Ramon S. Ang, but left the two-percent minority in the proverbial kangkungan.
Surprised at the sudden inaccessibility of their erstwhile majority partner, the minority shareholder e-mailed the señora who, instead of answering or making a small gesture of a phone call, forwarded the electronic communication to Inquirer lawyer/columnist, Raul Palabrica.
A former commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission who now writes about corporate governance and shareholder rights, Palabrica, in turn, forwarded the shareholder’s concern to an RSA lawyer for his consideration, much to the bafflement of the inquiring shareholder.
There is only one translation to this e-mail chain-passing, and it is best summed up in the vernacular: Bahala na kayo sa buhay ninyo.
What a strange turn of event for the minority shareholder. In her prime, she represented a blue-chip conglomerate and bread-and-butter advertiser, which the señora at one point even considered taking in as a 20 percent stakeholder, the corporate equivalent of a trophy wife. But that was, of course, all in the past. Just as the Inquirer had made much political hay about the “transactional politics” of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during her time in Malacañang, the affliction, to the minority’s belated realization, also infects even the do-gooders right up their beso-beso alley.