Businessman Manuel Pangilinan is expected to be elected chairman of power retailer Manila Electric Co. in place of Manuel Lopez when the company meets for its annual stockholders’ meeting next month.
Jose Ma. Lim, president of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. which has a substantial stake in Meralco, confirmed in an interview Pangilinan was set to assume the chairmanship of the country’s largest electricity distributor by May.
Lim has been nominated as a director of Meralco’s board this year, replacing Napoleon Nazareno, who is the president and chief executive of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Smart Communications.
Lopez, the current ambassador to Japan, serves as the non-executive chairman of Meralco while Pangilinan is the president and chief executive. Pangilinan is also the chairman of Metro Pacific and PLDT.
Lopez, whose family’s stake in Meralco was reduced to 3.9 percent this year, had expressed interest to step down as chairman, a position he has held since 2001.
Beacon Asset Holdings Inc., a special purpose company jointly owned by PLDT, Communications and Energy Ventures Inc. and Metro Pacific., increased its stake in Meralco to 48.02 percent after acquiring another 2.66-percent stake in the utility firm at P295 per share.
The transaction reduced the stake of the Lopez family in the utility firm to 3.9 percent.
Meralco’s other significant shareholder, aside from the Lopez family and Pangilinan’s group, is conglomerate San Miguel Corp. with a 37-percent stake.
Meralco said it expects core net income to increase conservatively by 0.7 percent to P15 billion this year, amid an expected decline in distribution tariffs for 2012.
The distributor posted a core net income of P14.88 billion last year, up 22 percent from 2010 while consolidated revenues, which substantially represented electricity sales, rose 7 percent to P256.8 billion.
Meralco chief operating officer Oscar Reyes said power sales soared by nearly 10 percent in the first quarter, with the strong rebound of commercial and industry sectors.
“The first quarter, compared to last year, was close to 10 percent growth,” said Reyes.
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/April/23) article source
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