Romero palms off stake in shell firm to his partners, Yuchengco named agent

New party-list Rep. Mikee Romero has sold his shareholdings in a listed shell company, Pacifica, to his own lawyers-partners.

And to get the takeover deal past the Philippine Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission, a newly-formed Unido Capital Holdings based in Cebu City has in turn appointed former PSE chairman Vivian Yuchengco, through her First Resources Management and Securities Corp., as tender offer agent.

According to regulatory disclosures, Unido Capital is led by lawyer Lowell Yu, who is also identified as chairman of Pacifica and president of iHoldings, a property development services company also based in Cebu.

Yu’s group had acquired 36.52 percent of the hardly-traded Pacifica at P0.007 a share, very much lower than last Friday’s close of P0.038 a share.

The 36.52-percent bloc was held by two Romero companies, 9th Kingdom and Mikro-Tech. The two Romero firms, together with iHoldings, in turn control 64.17 percent of Pacifica, with iHoldings and bidder Unido Capital being both controlled by the Yu group.

Unido Capital said it had paid over P102 million to acquire the 36.52 percent Romero bloc, and has allocated P100 million to acquire the balance for the same price of P0.007 a share.

Unido Capital’s corporate secretary, Ian Norman Dato, Yu’s former law partner and Arroyo-era undersecretary for political affairs. also happens to be a board director of Pacifica.

Dato said one option for the Yu group, post-tender offer, was to infuse assets into Pacifica through a backdoor-listing of an ongoing business concern.

• Yellow Cab Pizza is returning to the US market with the opening of a branch in Honolulu on Jan. 18.

Before the pizza chain was acquired by the Max’s Restaurant Group, Yellow Cab had ventured into the American market with a now-closed branch in Milpitas, California. • The long holiday mood continues at the Supreme Court. The high tribunal has suspended court hearings in Manila today in view of the expected traffic gridlock to be generated by the feast of the Nazarene.

Former Labor secretary Rosalina Baldoz has been rebuffed by the Supreme Court’s First Division, led by Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, for having “abused” her discretion.

Baldoz in a labor case had favored the Manila Peninsula union’s decision to increase dues to two percent, from the current one percent, of an employee’s basic monthly salary.

The high tribunal said the increase in union fees, collected by the union and its umbrella National Union of Workers in Hotel Restaurants and Allied Industries as collective bargaining agent, was never approved by the Peninsula hotel workers in a mandated general assembly.

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