The (partial) return of Gibo Teodoro

The best qualified presidential candidate of 2010, GMAera Defense Secretary Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr., will today emerge from his nearly four-year-old hibernation from news hounds to take on a more visible, even if somewhat limited, public position.

The 49-year-old brainier, certainly more confident and less pikon cousin of P-Noy is scheduled to be elected this afternoon as an independent director of listed bank BDO.

Teodoro is the latest among the GMA-era officials who have found succor within the corporate empire of taipan Henry Sy Sr. They include former Malacanang spokesman spokesman Gary Olivar, burrowed deep within BDO as a consultant, as well as ex-Gloria Macapagal-Arrroyo chief of staff Ma. Elena Bautista-Horn and ex-Mike Arroyo chief of staff Juris Soliman, who have found less stressful careers in SM Supermalls and SM Investments, respectively.

Teodoro was nominated to the BDO board by, interestingly, shareholder and ex-Equitable-PCIBanker Araceli Abriam, who is known within the TV5 circles as the executive assistant of the network’s news and current affairs chief, Luchi Cruz-Valdes.

Even before BDO, Teodoro already had a foot within the Sy Group with his board directorship in Philippine Geothermal Production Co., the joint venture of the SM Group with US oil giant Chevron that operates the Tiwi and Mak-Ban geothermal plants.

And in today’s meeting, do not be surprised if BDO president Nestor Tan seems to walk a foot taller and with more spring in his step. At 16 years, the longest-serving president of a major bank, the 56-year-old ex-Barclays expatriate still turned out a robust 56-percent rise in BDO’s 2013 net income to P22.6 billion.

That puts BDO just P2-billion short of industry leader Metrobank, whose 2013 profit growth was still a remarkable 34 percent.

To use a more meaningful industry metric, BDO’s return on average equity, which measures how much profit a company generates with the money shareholders have invested, was 14.2 percent, more than twice efficient than Metrobank’s 6.63 percent.

But then again, new BPI president Cesar Consing squeezed out more with an 18.1-percent return, closing 2013 with P18.8billion net profit for the Ayala bank and breathing down on the BDO president’s neck.

Amid the poor health of their patriarch, BDO inserted a clarificatory footnote within its definitive information statement issued ahead of today’s meeting: “There are no voting trust shares or shares issued pursuant to a voting trust agreement registered with BDO nor has there been any change in control of BDO. BDO is also not aware of any contractual arrangement or otherwise between its shareholders and/ or third parties, which may result in change of control of BDO.”

The bank added that the parties authorized to vote the controlling shareholdings of SM Investments Corp., MultiRealty Development Corp. and Sybase Equity Investment Corp. are BDO chairman Teresita Sy-Coson and her younger brother, director Henry “Big Boy” Sy Jr.

Charo Concio team gets salary freeze

Despite ratcheting up ABS-CBN’s 2013 profit by 25 percent, president Maria Rosario Santos-Concio and four other top network executives saw their combined compensation actually shrink by P3 million for the same year.

The Lopez network reported clearing over P2 billion, a hefty jump from 2012’s P1.6-billion profit. The GMA Network, on the other hand, announced a 2013 net income of P1.67 billion, a slight improvement from the previous year’s P1.62 billion.

Even better, ABS-CBN’s net revenues in 2013 rose 15 percent to P33.4 billion, significantly higher than the sevenpercent growth and P12.9-billion profit, of rival GMA.

Strangely, instead of a fatter package, Concio and her management team of Carlo Joaquin Tadeo Katigbak, Rolando Valduesa and the two other Marias (Lourdes Santos and Socorro Vidanes) took home a combined P143.35 million, P3 million less than the P146.26 million the group received the year before.

And this year apparently will not be any better. Without the expected bonus, the Concio team’s full- year salary for 2014 is even a million below what the same team had received in 2012.

In contrast, GMA chairman and chief executive Felipe Gozon and president Gilberto Duavit Jr., aside from being the controlling shareholders,were rewarded with P144.48 million pay package for 2013 – a million higher than the Concio team’s – despite squeezing a profit level, P1.6 billion, that ABS-CBN had already overtaken the previous year.

The good news for journalists about the Gozon-Duavit package is that, aside from chief finance officer Felipe Yalong, two news executives, Marissa Flores and Jessica Soho, make up the rest of the senior GMA management team.

This should catapult the two ladies, theoretically entitled to an average of P28.8 million each, as the country’s highest paid media mavens for 2013.

Heard through the grapevine

The planned dissolution of the dead-in-the-water Universal Leisure Club club chain had been aborted following a stormy shareholders’ meeting Tuesday, which saw DMCI chief executive and key Universal Leisure shareholder Isidro Consunji being subjected to withering questions from minority shareholders.

The dissidents included a representative sent by an exgirl friend who lost her figurative shirt, among others, to Consunji.

E-mail: cocktales_tv5@yahoo.com