By Donnabelle
L. Gatdula (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 27, 2013 - 12:00am
MANILA,
Philippines - Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), the banking arm of the
Yuchengco Group, has sold its stake in RCBC Realty Corp. to the consortium of
Pan Malayan Management and Investment Corp. and House of Investments (HI), the
bank said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).
RCBC informed
the PSE that it would be disposing its 34.8 percent stake in the realty firm
for a maximum amount of P5.48 billion. Pan Malayan and HI are both investment
vehicles of the Yuchengco Group. RCBC Realty is a joint venture between RCBC
and the Government (of Singapore) Investment Corp.
Majority-owned
by RCBC Land Inc., RCBC Realty primarily engages in managing and developing
real estate infrastructure projects. The company’s maiden project is the RCBC
Plaza, which is RCBC’s corporate headquarters.
The RCBC
board, in its meeting held March 25, also gave its go-signal to declare P1 per
share cash dividends to its shareholders worth a total P1.14 billion. The
record date for the cash declaration has yet to be set and would need approval
of regulators.
RCBC recently
sold P4.8 billion worth of non-performing assets (NPAs) to the Philippine Asset
Growth One Inc., a special purpose company spearheaded by the International
Finance Corp., the private sector investment arm of the World Bank; and
partnered with OSK Holdings Berhad and Altus Transactional Services Inc.
RCBC
president and chief executive officer Lorenzo V. Tan said the sale of the NPAs,
a product of the 1997 Asian crisis, allows the bank to free up more funds for
lending.
Also
recently, RCBC made a formal signing with IFC wherein RCBC issued 45.15 million
common shares amounting to $100 million to IFC Capitalization (Equity) Fund, a
global equity and subordinated debt fund founded by IFC and the Japan Bank for
International Cooperation (JICA).
This
development will boost the bank’s total Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio (CAR) to
11.5 percent.
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