Inquirer calls belated shareholders’ meeting; no RSA sale on agenda

The señoras of the Philippine Daily Inquirer have summoned their dwindling number of shareholders next month to a delayed annual meeting, with the proverbial elephant-in-the-room, the announced sale to San Miguel president Ramon S. Ang, missing from the agenda.

Ahead of the meeting, one of the señoras already briefed a number of non-shareholder editors about the print Inquirer suffering a shocking, but unconfirmed, “P200-million loss” last year.

The unverified “loss” comes even more surprising since the two Inquirer-related printing companies had booked profits the year before of more than P200 million combined.

Unlike the listed Manila Bulletin, where the company owns both the news and printing divisions, the señoras not only spun off the printing press, the newsprint, and ink supply, and the website businesses out of the parent Inquirer, but also kept the minority shareholders out of the spun-off companies.

What we are trying to say is that it would take dogged forensic accounting to determine the actual financial health of the Inquirer Group, something similar to the due-diligence RSA has apparently concluded and, well, we will just wait for Don Ramon (as columnist Bel Cunanan calls him) to make his next move.

What we can positively declare is that the PLDT Group had managed to bail out of the Inquirer, the only major development since the July 2017 announcement about RSA becoming a white knight to the country’s favorite broadsheet tabloid.

The señoras had apparently managed to cajole RSA to advance the money to buy out PLDT’s 12 percent bloc, without inviting the other minority shareholders, journalists belonging to the diabetic-arthritic club, if they care to join the sale.

Of the less-than-a-dozen minority stockholders, only Cunanan has so far expressed enthusiasm, approaching her zeal in defending Ma. Lourdes Sereno, in attending the June 8 meeting.

For the longest time, the Inquirer had held the annual shareholders’ meeting in late April until it was moved to the fourth Thursday of May, because April was too close to the tax-deadline crunch, or that the señoras were still overseas for their annual summer holiday.

No explanation was contained in last week’s notice as to why this year’s meeting was being postponed to the first Friday of June.

Then again, who can blame them? The señoras are only being true to themselves – the hired help does not need to know.

Mandarin’s loss not Shang, Pen’s gain

The conventional wisdom was that the neighboring ShangriLa and Peninsula hotels would benefit from the closure of the neighboring Mandarin. That, unfortunately, did not happen. By their own accounts, both Shang and Pen even suffered reduced occupancy and room rates last year.

“Competition in Manila was intense, with a large increase in the supply of luxury hotel rooms in 2017 driving business away from the Metro Manila region as new CBDs emerge and compete for corporate business,” Pen’s Hong Kong-based parent said. “We expect this will remain an issue in 2018.”

In actual numbers, the Peninsula Manila’s gross revenues went down by three percent, its occupancy rate by two percentage points, its average room rate by five percent, and its revPAR by eight percent.

Citing the influx of new hotel supply and the depreciating peso, Shangri-La said its revenue per available room in its Makati hotel suffered a 10 percent drop in 2017, with the new Shangri-La in The Fort shrinking by, gasp, 23 percent.

So who in the neighborhood could have gained from the closure?

A simple Google check among the five-star hotels within Ayala Center gave a clue. This was what the top Makati hotels were quoting yesterday for an overnight stay: o Peninsula: P5,586 o Discovery Primea: P8,640 o Shangri-La: P8,196 o Diamond: P6,463 o New World: P6,004 o Holiday Inn: P5,985 o Raffles: P12,847 Even the boutique, three-star Hotel Celeste across Pasay Road was holding its own against the venerable Pen at P5,069.

Heard through the grapevine

Taipan Andrew Tan not only has become the major landlord of Madrid’s new financial district, the Chinese immigrant now also owns the highest Catholic chapel in the country, located at the 33rd floor of his Torre Espacio office tower.

E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com