E-Malt.com News article: 1595

The Philippine government has told San Miguel Corp to allow the state an additional 5% stake in Southeast Asia's largest food and beverage firm, a senior official said on September 22, according to Reuters. In 1986, the government of then President Corazon Aquino sequestered a 27 % stake in San Miguel under CIIF Holding Companies, a private fund, on suspicion the shares were illegally acquired during the rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Ruben Carranza, commissioner of the agency formed to track down the Marcos assets, said the government sent a letter to San Miguel demanding it turn over 25.45 million shares to raise the equity held by CIIF to 32 %. An analyst at a local stock brokerage estimated the five percent stake was worth more than 1.53 billion pesos ($27.82 million) at current market prices.

San Miguel rules its home markets in the Philippines for beer, liquor, poultry and processed food. It runs breweries in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia.

The Supreme Court decided in 2001 that San Miguel must turn over an additional 5% stake to the Presidential Commission on Good Government. "We already wrote to the corporate secretary, attorney Francis Jardeleza. If he respects the Supreme Court, all he has to do is start the process," Carranza told a briefing for foreign reporters. San Miguel President Ramon Ang declined to comment and said company lawyers were studying the government's demand. "We're still checking on it," Ang told Reuters.


24 September, 2003