Andrew Tan builds 2nd tower in Madrid
Taipan Andrew Tan, under the radar of Philippine media and regulatory authorities, is building his second office tower in the financial district of Madrid.
According to Spanish media reports, foundation work has finally begun on Torre Caleido, of which Tan reportedly acquired 49 percent last year from Grupo Villar Mir, the same real estate conglomerate that had sold the fully-built, 57-story Torre Espacio to Tan in 2015. With Tan on board as joint-venture partner, the 35-story Torre Caleido has had to undergo some design modifications to include, at the request of the Filipino developer, two movie theaters and a gourmet supermarket at the podium level.
Torre Caleido will also house a private campus of the IE University and a sports hospital when finished by 2020.
According to Spanish media reports, Torre Caleido will cost €300 million, with Tan’s Megaworld Corp. ponying up €150 million as a co-owner. Tan, in late 2015, spent €558 million to acquire Torre Espacio, Madrid’s fourth tallest tower.
It was not immediately clear how Tan financed his second Madrid trophy.
According to ING Bank, Tan
Tan had initially funded his first Madrid venture “solely with equity,” but the taipan, who was also acquiring at the same time the Spanish brandy group Bodegas Fundador, later decided to refinance part of the acquisition cost with €280 million of debt.
ING executed the €280 million, seven-year term loan in February 2016 as sole bookrunner and underwriter before syndicating the deal in April 2017.
Torre Espacio and the future Torre Caleido are part of a five-tower development within the Castellana complex, on a business park built on the former Real Madrid sports stadium.
Grupo Villar Mir, the developer of the complex and Tan’s partner, is controlled by billionaire Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Spain.
Lucio Tan wins P898-M tax refund
Taipan Lucio Tan coughed up P6 billion in disputed tax assessments for Philippine Airlines in October, after President Duterte named and shamed the billionaire into submission.
This time, it is Tan’s turn to collect from the government.
The Court of Tax Appeals last week ordered the Bureaus of Customs and Internal Revenue to refund PAL nearly P898 million in specific taxes the flag carrier was made to pay for its importation of aviation turbo jet fuel from February 2003 to December 2004.
PAL actually lost the tax case in 2014, but the tax appellate court reversed itself after the airline submitted additional import documentation to prove that there was no locally available supply of aviation fuel in reasonable quantity, quality, and price at that time.
“The plain and simple meaning of ‘locally available supply’ refers only to domestically produced products, and excludes importation since an item that is imported is logically not locally available,” PAL said.
“Assuming arguendo that the term ‘locally available supply’ includes importation, the importation of airline companies should be excluded as these are not available for public consumption,” it added.
Associate Justices Lovell Bautista, Esperanza FabonVictorino, and Ma. Belen Ringpis-Liban agreed, saying PAL was compliant with a Marcos-era presidential decree, PD 1590, that exempts from payment of specific taxes on imports of jet fuel used for transport operations.
Heard through the grapevine
Call it the “Ortiz premium.” The combined paychecks of the top five Union Bank executives, led by new president and chief executive Edwin Bautista, will shrink this year to about P187 million from last year’s nearly P279 million, when Justo Ortiz was still chairman and CEO of his family’s bank.
Even without last year’s presumed retirement package for Ortiz, the combined 2018 compensation of the Bautista team is still nearly P68 million lower than 2016’s P254.7 million handed out to the Ortiz team.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com