Ding ding ding! Wenceslao is next dollar billionaire
Construction magnate Delfin “Ding” Wenceslao Jr. will mark two milestones this year: He will have turned 75 and he will, by next month, officially be the Philippines’ latest dollar billionaire.
Upon completion of the initial public offering, where 20 percent of DM Wenceslao & Associates will be offered to the public, the value of his construction and real estate company, if the offer price of P22.90 a share holds, shall have zoomed up to P77.7 billion. Post-IPO, Wenceslao will be left with an 80 percent shareholdings in his namesake company, a stake valued at P62 billion.
In addition, Wenceslao would have also raised P14.4 billion in working capital to further transform his remaining 57 hectares within the Aseana Business Park as the new central business district of Parañaque.
The P22.90 target price is incidentally over eight percent lower than the P25/share offer price had the original listing in late 2015 not been scuttled due to poor market conditions. The two-year delay could even be fortuitous. In January this year the Construction Industry Arbitration Commission finally issued a writ of execution, ordering the City of Mandaue to honor the reclamation contract that it had entered way back in 2001 with the Wenceslao consortium to reclaim 295 hectares from the sea.
Out of that reclamation venture, the Wenceslao consortium would be entitled to about 45 hectares in net usable area, or about half the land area of the Makati central business district, Wenceslao right next to land-short Cebu City.
Co acquires Spanish brandy stake
Retail tycoon Lucio Co has acquired an undisclosed minority stake in the Spanish winemaker Williams & Humbert, whose brandy products Co’s Puregold stores have been distributing in the last two decades.
According to Spanish media reports, Co signed the transaction in Madrid Monday at the residence of Philippine Ambassador to Spain, Philippe Lhuillier, with Jesus Medina Garcia de Polavieja representing the Medina family, owners of Williams & Humbert Winery.
Co had also been the exclusive distributor of the popular Fundador brandy until the Pedro Domecq winery was acquired by the Emperador Distillers of Andrew Tan.
Co’s Puregold supermarket chain currently distributes three brandies produced by Williams & Humbert – 1877, Alfonso I, and Alhambra, a Philippine-specific solera brandy.
BDO point man checks Gokongwei grounds
The investment banking deals must be few and far between amid the global political and market instabilities that BDO Capital president Eduardo Francisco has had to literally cross the economic divide in search of business.
Francisco was spotted at the JG Summit shareholders meeting on Monday, listening raptly to the presentation of JG Summit chief executive Lance Gokongwei about the conglomerate’s 2018 expenditures and investment plans.
Adding to the mystery was that Francisco seated himself at the SGV table, SGV being the external auditor of JG Summit, unlike BDO, which has Punongbayan and Araullo. Even his fellow investment banking colleague, now JG Summit independent director Renato de Guzman, was stumped for an explanation as to Francisco’s presence.
When a nosy journalist asked him, “What are you doing here” (translation: what deals are you cooking here?). Francisco smiled and gave a non-responsive answer, “I am friends with everybody,” before beating a hasty retreat.
Heard through the grapevine
The Rustan’s supermarket chain will be renamed “Marketplace” after the regulatory approvals shall have been obtained by the listed Robinsons Retail to fold in the Dairy Farm venture in Philippines.
Similar to Rustan’s, the Hong Kong-based Dairy Farm operates the upscale “Market Place” supermarket, originally from Singapore and now has branches in Taiwan.
Even before Dairy Farm flipped Rustan’s to the Gokongwei Group, the pan-Asian retail giant had already started quietly re-branding the Tantoco-founded supermarket, as can be gleaned by the similar “Marketplace” signage placed underneath the Rustan’s logo in Rockwell and Fort branches.