Good times roll on: CEOs expect healthy pay raises for 2018
The chief executives of the Philippines’ top-listed companies expect healthy pay raises to continue this year on the back of record earnings posted during DU30’s first full-year of colorful rule.
The brothers Jaime Augusto and Fernando Zobel, and three other senior executives of Ayala Corp. can look forward to an 8.28 percent increase in their combined paychecks for 2018, outpacing the expected 4.3 percent inflation rate for the year. Not counting stock options, Team Zobel will see their combined compensation rising this year to over P530 million from last year’s P490 million.
Over at SM Investments Corp., president Frederic DyBuncio and four top SMIC executives will see a considerable 9.25 percent pay increase in this Year of the Dog.
Then again, the combined compensation of the DyBuncio quintet at P118 million is about a fifth of what their counterparts at Ayala receive, even though the market capitalization of SMIC at P1.1 trillion dwarfs Ayala’s P625 billion.
Over at the banking sector, the same comparative trend may be gleaned between the Bank of Philippine Islands and BDO.
BDO’s Nestor Tan and his senior management team will see their combined 2018 pay envelopes adjusted by four percent to P192.11 million, as against the 11 percent increase to P250.8 million, for BPI’s Cezar Consing and four others.
The considerably uneven pay increases are being handed out on the back of BDO posting a record P28.1 billion profit last year, as against BPI’s P22.4 billion.
The need to continuously dangle bigger financial carrots is also evident at ABS-CBN, despite a challenging 2017 compounded by the country’s largest broadcast network being caught in Duterte’s crosshairs.
For 2018, ABS-CBN president Carlo Katigbak and four senior officers will still see their base pay increase by five percent, even though the cash dividend the Lopez network will hand out to shareholders by next week will shrink to 92 centavos a share from last year ’s P1.04.
PAL to build 2nd lounge with terminal shuffle
Taipan Lucio Tan will have to fork out a conservative P60 million to build another Mabuhay Lounge because of the terminal shuffle being ordered by the airport authorities.
According to the grapevine, Philippine Airlines has already chosen the fourth floor of Terminal 1 to construct a 1,500-square-meter Mabuhay Lounge to serve its business class passengers.
The second lounge will be in addition to a similarsized lounge the taipan is currently expanding within Terminal 2, a passenger facility that PAL needs to provide in its drive to attain a five-star rating.
Under the government’s terminal rationalization plan, PAL will have to give up exclusive use of Terminal 2 and move its international flights back to Terminal 1, sharing Terminal 1 with Etihad, JAL, Saudia, and Thai Airways.
Terminal 3 will also become a purely international terminal serving the bulk of the foreign carriers, as well as the international flights of Cebu Pacific.
Terminal 2, which was originally designed as a domestic terminal, will now service the domestic flights of both PAL and Cebu Pacific, with Terminal 4, the old domestic airport, continuing to serve Air Asia Zest, CebGo, and Ayala’s AirSwift.
According to the grapevine, the Manila International Airport Authority is targeting to complete the terminal transfers by Aug. 29, with international passengers with connecting domestic flights this early being advised to factor in three hours in-between connections. Why three hours? Because after clearing immigration and customs, an international passenger with connecting domestic flight will have to be bused to either of the two domestic terminals, a transfer that, given the traffic gridlock around the airport, would take longer than the actual domestic flight itself.
Heard through the grapevine
Former finance secretary Cesar Purisima, who has become quite close to the Zobels during the PNoy years, will join the board of Ayala Land as an independent director, vice Angela Ignacio.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com