It has been a long and winding road for the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) in its bid to acquire PDS Holdings Corp., in turn part of the aspiration to unify the country’s capital market infrastructure. Now on its 25th year since the unification of the old Makati and Manila stock exchanges to create the bourse that we now know as the PSE, will it be successful in merging with the PDS Group this time around?
Recently, the PSE obtained commitment from other key shareholders of PDS to sell their shares, which will allow the former to gain majority control of PDS, the holding firm for fixed-income trading platform Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. (PDEx), Philippine Depositary and Trust Corp. (PDTC) and Philippine Securities Settlement Corp. (PSSC).
The Bankers Association of the Philippines and affiliate firms, the single biggest stockholder group, earlier agreed to sell their 23.8-percent interest in PDS. More recently, the PSE also obtained a commitment from IT provider Whistler Technologies Services Inc. to sell its 8-percent stake. As the PSE already owns 20.98 percent of PDS, the shares committed by these two shareholder groups will allow it to raise its interest in PDS to 52.78 percent.
“This transaction is envisioned to facilitate further growth in the local capital markets by introducing efficiencies in the trading and back office systems of both the equities and fixed income markets, among others,” the PSE said in a regulatory filing.
“It is aimed at creating a better environment for the introduction of more products and services for the various market stakeholders as well as the implementation of improvements in risk management processes,” it added.
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Another significant PDS shareholder that the PSE still has to convince to sell is Singapore Exchange Ltd., which owns around 20 percent. Other shareholders are San Miguel Corp. (4 percent), Tata Consultancy Services (8 percent), Financial Executives Institute (3.1 percent) and Development Bank of the Philippines (3.1 percent).
P2-billion valuation
