Ces Drilon’s partner overtakes Lopez boys
PNoy communications secretary Ramon “Ricky” Carandang told select journalists he was not going back to the ratings-driven broadcast industry after he quit the Cabinet in 2013, midway through to PNoy’s term.
He apparently has multi-million reasons through to stay away from the media trenches, even now.
Carandang has emerged two years in a row as one of the five highest paid executives of First Philippine Holdings, the management and investment company of the Lopez family, to the delight of his broadcast and domestic kapamilya, ABS-CBN’s Ces Drilon.
According to regulatory disclosures, Carandang, despite his vice president rank, is right at the top of the financial totem pole with First Philippine chairman emeritus Oscar Lopez, chairman/chief executive Federico Lopez, president Francis Giles Puno, and senior vice president Joaquin Quintos IV.
The five heavy-hitters, Carandang included, received P113 million in 2017 salaries, plus another P71.6 million thrown in as bonuses, First Philippine disclosed. That works out to nearly P37 million each executive.
According to First Philippine records, Carandang joined the company in May 2015, two years after leaving the Aquino administration, as vice president for corporate communications.
His inclusion to the senior management team means he not only has leaped over First Philippine treasurer/chief finance officer Emmanuel Singson and SVPs Anthony Mabasa, Victor Emmanuel Santos Jr., Nestor Padilla, Joaquin Quintos IV, and Renato Castillo, Carandang has also overtaken fellow VPs Oscar Lopez Jr. and Benjamin Lopez, despite their being sons of the Lopez patriarch.
The return of Aleli Arroyo
Six years after the messy death and estate-related issues of her estranged husband, Negros Occidental Representative Iggy Arroyo, stockbroker Aleli Morales is returning to the public arena, sort of.
A former chairman of the Philippine Stock Exchange, Morales is set to join the board of the listed First Gen next month as an independent director.
Unknown to the public, Morales rebounded from the very public melodrama by going back to school, taking an Advanced Management Program from the Harvard Business School in 2014.
According to First Gen, Morales is now a managing director of John Clements Consultants, the executive talent search firm, where she was instrumental in obtaining the partnership with Harvard Business Publishing, providing discussion leaders trained to teach case studies using Harvard’s case methodology.
She is set to replace Jollibee’s Tony Tan Caktiong in the First Gen board.
Money talks
• The G&W Architects, Engineers and Project Consultants Co. has been ordered to pay a whopping P560 million in withholding and documentary stamp taxes, plus 20 percent penalty per year from 2004, on top of a 25 percent surcharge for late payment, after the Court of Tax Appeals en banc overturned its First Division that had earlier cleared the architectural firm.
The delinquent taxes emanated from two residential condo projects in the Fort, Grand Hamptons and Crescent Park, that G&W not only built, but as Presiding Justice Roman del Rosario had so forcefully dissented after his colleagues in the first division sided with the architectural firm, also owned and marketed.
• Investment banker Stephen CuUnjieng has been nominated to the board of First Philippine Holdings as an independent director, with the Lopezes posing no objections to CuUnjieng despite his already being in the board of Aboitiz Equity Ventures, which like First Philippine, is also into power generation.
Heard through the grapevine
Jaguar Land Rover is seeking to stop Cebu lawyer Lowell Yu and his family, along with the Southeast Asia Retail Inc. where Yu is chairman, from using “Landers” in their membership shopping superstore chain.
The Indian-owned British motoring marquee claims it has obtained the global trademark for the commercial use of the word “Lander” ahead of Yu and company.