Holy cow! Banco Filipino conjures up another run

WHAT could have gotten into the heads of the top Banco Filipino executives and their lawyers?

Now, they themselves are predicting that their thrift bank would most likely be hit by another run, to be generated by no less than the Bangko Sentral.

“Given the great economic distress that the world is undergoing right now, it is certain that the said auction sale of [Banco Filipino’s] properties would cause panic amongst its clients and shall surely result in a bank run,” Banco Filipino declared in a new complaint filed against the Bangko Sentral and its policy-making Monetary Board.

The civil complaint, which seeks to stop the central bank from auctioning foreclosed Banco Filipino properties, and the bank run scenario, was conjured up by no less than Perfecto Yasay Jr., the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission who is now lawyering for the thrift bank, along with Banco Filipino executive vice president Maxy Abad and corporate secretary Francisco Rivera.

Abad and Rivera even disclosed that the Banco Filipino head office in Makati had already been mortgaged to the Bangko Sentral, to partially secure a previous emergency loan.

Filed late last month at the Makati Regional Trial Court, the civil complaint is part of the legal strategy of Banco Filipino to force Bangko Sentral to offset the foreclosed properties against their P18.8-billion damage claim it had lodged against the old Central Bank and, now, its successor, for having “ïllegally” closed the thrift bank after it suffered another bank run in the crisis of 1984.

To make the charges stick, Banco Filipino turned on their head the comptroller and oversight functions that the Bangko Sentral has imposed on the troubled thrift bank, claiming that through those roles the banking regulator has been keeping the savings bank “hostage” since it reopened in 1994.

Yasay—yes, the same SEC chairman whom then President Estrada cursed on national television (“Tamaan ka sana ng kidlat,” was Mr. Estrada’s graphic epithet) for allegedly lying—used every derogatory adjective that any ambulance chaser can use to bamboozle its opponents.

The 48-page complaint is peppered with the words like “hostage,” “covetousness,” “greed,” “abuse,” “insidious duplicity,” “abusive,” “constantly finding fault,” “oppressive,” “confiscatory,” “institutional conspiracy”—all directed against past and present Bangko Sentral officials.

(Disclosure: Cocktales is being sued, originally for P3 billion in damages, by the Banco Filipino for a critical article that had appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The bank later reduced its libel claim, after realizing an elementary legal error on its part, to P1.7 billion,)

Heard through the grapevine

The Monetary Board has cleared the appointment of Emmanuel Hilado as treasurer of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., as well as the promotion of seven other RCBC officers, led by incoming first senior vice president Michael “Mister Universe” de Jesus.

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)