Inquirer admits to change of heart in RSA marriage
It was supposed to have been an ideal union – the cash-flush and generous president of the San Miguel conglomerate giving the Inquirer señoras their golden parachute in exchange for his becoming the Jeff Bezos of the Philippines and the darling of the Makati Business Club.
Now it is beginning to look like the groom – or the bride, depending on where your sympathies lie – is trying to escape from a shotgun marriage. After announcing nearly a year ago that “the Prieto family had decided to give up its ownership of the Inquirer Group of Companies and sell it to business tycoon Ramon S. Ang,” Inquirer president Sandy Prieto-Romualdez admitted in last week’s shareholders’ meeting that her family was still entertaining bids from other undisclosed suitors.
There is a simple explanation to this change of heart, the runaway bride/groom syndrome. RSA apparently has refused to be rushed into the accepting the señoras’ proposition that the San Miguel president buy the whole Inquirer Group, including two buildings, two printing press companies, the radio station, and the magazine stable.
RSA also did not want the extraneous newsprint supply business or the related logistics business that the Rufino-Prieto clan wanted to bundle in the Inquirer sale.
“The big hurdle is the Inquirer Group insisting that RSA buy everything,” said one who attended the Friday meeting, but asked not to be identified by name. “RSA just wants to cherry pick.”
As this column had reported on Aug. 11, 2017, the San Miguel president then said he was only interested in acquiring the newspaper business, and possibly its website operations, not the whole caboodle.
In other words, RSA wanted to marry only the bride, not the entire family.
Still, as a sign of good faith, RSA even advanced an undisclosed amount, a pakimkim if you will, to bail the PLDT bloc out of the Inquirer ahead of the RSA acquisition.
Strangely, that hush-hush sale of Inquirer shareholdings was missing in the agenda in last week’s annual meeting, a verboten topic not even crusading columnist and minority shareholder Bel Cunanan dare ask during the post-meeting pleasantries.
Why the señoras facilitated the PLDT exit without extending the same courtesies to Cunanan and the two percent minority bloc of founding journalists should make an excellent case study on financial inclusion, Philippine-style, at the Asian Institute of Management.
Still, someone managed to pry out an admission from one of the señoras: that the Inquirer owners want to complete the Inquirer sale, a divestment that the Rufino-Prieto family had admitted to have negotiated with RSA as early as 2014, “before the year ends.” Meaning this year, 2018.
“I asked Sandy if she would consider selling only what RSA wants to buy,” said one shareholder. “She said they’re not considering it now, but may do so in the future.”
The year-end deadline comes amid Sandy’s admission that the 2017 income had “declined by 26 percent” from a reported 2016 net income of P15.7 million.
The sister tabloid Libre, despite being given away for free in exchange for free advertising, lost “70 percent” and had to be shut down in October, along with the scaling back of the Cebu and Davao printing presses.
Money-Go-Round is unable to quote the exact 2017 figures because the Inquirer señoras again resorted to their tradition of collecting the copies of the financial statements and the annual report at the end of the shareholders’ meeting.
Years ago, during the tumultous Estrada administration to be exact, minority shareholder Victor Agustin had innocently asked why the regulatory documents, distributed only at the start of the meeting, had to be returned half an hour later.
He received one cheeky explanation, but since the reply was supposed to have been given on an off-the-record basis, he is honoring the commitment.
Still, if you doubt the veracity of the preceding bigaysoli account, go ahead and ask the newly-elected Inquirer chairman, former SEC commissioner and corporate governance advocate Raul Palabrica.
As to the identities of the unnamed suitors, MoneyGo-Round will not be surprised if the family of Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez and their newspaper empire is one of them.
After all Sandy is married to Philip Romualdez.
New York-based socialite Minnie Osmena is back in town, determined to skewer former GSIS general manager Winston Garcia on the witness stand.
Osmeña, despite the socialite tag, is actually a member of the heavy-hitting Harvard Kennedy School Dean’s Council, she is contesting the will of her late mother that Garcia had drafted with the househelp as witnesses.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com