A Cojuangco goes from polo to fintech, from Bay Area to Manila
She competed in polo for the Philippines in the Asian Games during her high school days, but nowadays Danielle Cojuangco-Abraham, the San Franciscobased daughter of former Pangasinan congressman Mark Cojuangco, is busy competing for younger engineering talents for her start-up fintech venture.
Herself a mechanical engineering graduate of Stanford University, Danielle along with her engineer husband have already raised “$5 million to $10 million” funding for the pre-launch of their financial technology firm.
Called Zed Financial Inc., the venture aims to make “credit accessible to young professionals in emerging markets.” Although incorporated in California, the start-up company is classified as “foreign stock,” with Danielle herself as co-founder maintaining her dual Philippine and American citizenship.
Its first launch country would be, no surprise here, the Philippines, where Zed Financial aims to be “a challenger bank” that would help “fix a broken, trillion dollar banking system that has shut out the world’s youngest and fastest growing consumer classes.”
“We also have direct ties to regulators and a multi-generation history in the banking industry in the countries that we plan on launching in,” as a Zed Financial hiring brief put it, apparently referring to Danielle’s late grandfather, San Miguel chairman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. and his pre-sequestration United Coconut Planters Bank.
In its hiring brief, the San Francisco-based venture said it is assembling a group of engineers “to build a core banking system...from scratch,” using the Cojuangco condo in Telegraph Hill as the start-up office.
The putative, third-generation Cojuangco bank will apparently be patterned after Brazil’s Nubank, the largest financial technology bank in Latin America, and whose former chief financial officer contributed seed funding to Zed Financial.
With the new engineering hires, the fintech venture targets a beta launch “later this year” from its home base in the Bay Area, with a yet undisclosed Manila location assuming the front-office operations. If Cojuangco’s venture were to follow the Nubank template in Brazil, it would start by offering young professionals a free credit card with a minimal line of credit, about $10 in Nubank’s case, as its marketing’s opening salvo.
SC slaps down COA again for overreach
For the second time in as many months, the Supreme Court has slapped down the Commission on Audit for regulatory overreach.
With the 15 justices voting unanimously, the High Tribunal reversed the Commission on Audit and ordered the P24.6 million refund that Cathay Pacific Steel Corp. has been trying to collect from the government since 2006.
The decision, released last week, said the government audit agency had committed grave abuse of discretion when it blocked the steel company’s money claim despite a 2010 order from the Court of Appeals directing the National Power Corp. to refund the company.
According to court records, Cathay Pacific Steel was among the large electricity users which were given by the Macapagal-Arroyo administration discounted rate to optimize power usage, with price per kWh declining as consumption increases.
But despite the order by the Energy Regulatory Commission being upheld by the Court of Appeals, Napocor, supported by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. and later by COA, balked and contested the ERC directive all the way to the Supreme Court.
“There is no constitutional nor statutory provision giving the COA review powers akin to an appellate body such as the power to modify or set aside a judgment of a court or other tribunal on errors of fact or law,” said Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier, citing a 2020 SC decision.
“Once a court or other adjudicative body validly acquires jurisdiction over a money claim against the government, it exercises and retains jurisdiction over the subject matter to the exclusion of all others, including the COA.”
Last month, the High Tribunal also rebuffed COA, saying the agency had also committed grave abuse of authority amounting to excess or lack of jurisdiction when it blocked an P11.5 million court judgement to a construction company, V.C. Ponce, that had been trying to collect from the government since the Marcos administration.
Money talks
• Fil-Estate Realty founder/president Noel Carino is set to join the board of Acesite Philippines, which owns the Manila Pavilion, part of the Waterfront Hotel chain of tycoon William Gatchalian.
• Anscor chairman Andres Soriano III will have his revenge travel in Europe in the usual high fashion, with ASIII again captaining his British-flagged yacht, Alegre, with next month’s resumption of the 52 Super Series race across the Mediterranean Sea
Heard through the grapevine
The Land Bank of the Philippines has let a Duterte adviser off the hook, allowing the P465-million bouncing checks against the adviser to be dismissed by a Makati court after the government bank failed to pay the P9 million filing fee.
Ironically, it was Landbank itself, pre-Duterte administration, that had initiated the criminal complaint.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com