Manuel Pangilinan, the chairman of leading telco Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), has filed a motion for reconsideration of the Supreme Court decision on foreign ownership limits.
Napoleon Nazareno, the president and CEO of PLDT, has filed a…
Manuel Pangilinan, the chairman of leading telco Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), has filed a motion for reconsideration of the Supreme Court decision on foreign ownership limits.
Napoleon Nazareno, the president and CEO of PLDT, has filed a similar motion, according to a stock exchange filing.
Foreign investment in a Philippine telecom carrier is restricted to 40% but the Supreme Court has reportedly clarified that only voting or common shares can be included when calculating the capital stock of a company, therefore excluding preferred or non-voting shares.
The clarification on the calculation came after a lawyer recently sought to annul the sale of the government’s 46% in Philippine Telecommunications Investment (PTIC) to Hong Kong investment firm First Pacific in 2007. PTIC controls 13.94% of PLDT.
Under this calculation, PLDT would therefore be more than 64%-foreign owned.
In early July, PLDT said it would issue preferred shares with full voting rights to Philippine nationals in order to ease concerns regarding a potential breach of foreign ownership laws.
“When issued, the 150,000,000 voting preferred shares will be about 45% of the expanded voting shares of PLDT and the total foreign equity in PLDT’s expanded voting shares will be reduced from the current 64% to about 36%,” a statement read.
It however added that “its current share structure fully complies with the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, reports wrote that Philippine President Benigno Aquino recently asked lawyers to study the Supreme Court ruling on foreign investment caps, concerned it might disrupt private sector investments.
