The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has asked San Miguel Corp (SMC) to justify why it shouldn’t be sanctioned for possible disclosure rule violations after it acquired majority stake in the major Philippine Oil refiner, Petron Corp.
SMC acquired its stake after acquiring a subsidiary of UK’s the Ashmore Group that held their shares in Petron. Ashmore acquired the 40% stake of the government late last year after paying P25.7 billion.
SMC however answered to the PSE that there is no obligation for them to disclose their agreement because SEA Refinery has no relationship or disclosure obligation to the PSE. They also mentioned that they were bound by non disclosure agreements found in their deal with Ashmore.
It has been speculated that the reason SMC bought out SEA Refinery instead of the Petron shares outright was in order to bypass PSE “tender-offer” rules. The rule requires offers to buy out other share holders if more than 35% of a companies shares have been bought. This move to indirectly acquire the shares raised a ruckus with Petron’s minority stakeholders.
This came after the news that officers of SMC had taken over the board seats in Petron previously owned by the government. SMC will pay Ashmore $10 million for its option to purchase SEA Refinery, the subsidiary that owns the Petron shares.
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Category: Oil, Oil Price, Petron
