Manila Golf share price jumps 50% this year; no seller at P65M
The real estate fever has spread to the Manila Golf and Country Club, with the share price spiking by a whopping 50 percent this year.
GG&A Club Shares has a buy offer of P65 million for a corporate share of the Manila Golf, and P60 million for individual share, with no seller biting so far.
Another broker, G&W Club Shares, said it has a P55 million buy offer for both individual and corporate shares, but also no takers. The asking price represents a 50-percent jump from the January 2018 level of P42.5 million, according to data from both brokerage firms.
The last Manila Golf share sale transaction a few moons ago was recorded at P60 million, eclipsing the pre-Asian currency crisis high of P50 million two decades ago, when the exchange rate was P26-$1.
The country’s most exclusive club has a total of 1,000 shares, whose ownership extends to the 44-hectares of golf course sandwiched by Forbes Park and The Fort.
The nearby Manila Polo Club has, likewise, been bitten by the inflation bug, with both G&W and GG&A reporting a P23 million bid against a P25 million sell, representing a near 40 percent jump from the last recorded transaction of P16.5 million when the year began.
A similar price surge has also gripped Wack Wack, with club share spiking from the January level of P23 million to P35 million bid against P39 million asking, according to G&W data.
Gokongweis unload Meralco ahead of Christmas
JG Summit chairman and chief executive James Go has liquidated almost all his personal shareholdings in the Manila Electric Co., where he is a director.
According to regulatory disclosures, Go disposed nearly 400,000 shares of Meralco since last month, raising over P150 million in pre-Christmas cheer.
His nephew and fellow Meralco director, Lance Gokongwei, raised a more modest P8.6 million for himself after unloading all but 10 of his 22,310 Meralco shares.
Despite the disposals, JG Summit Go is even increasing its ownership in Metro Manila’s power distributor, with the Gokongwei holding company enlarging its 27.1 percent stake at the start of 2017 to 29.5 percent as of end-September.
That JG Summit bloc in Meralco has a current market value of P130 billion.
Money talks
• Filinvest matriarch Mercedes Gotianun has been quietly undertaking estate planning, transferring her personal shareholdings in both Filinvest Development and Filinvest Land to the family’s unlisted holding company, AL Gotianun Inc.
The series of transactions had apparently goosed the share price of Filinvest Development, spiking from P7.20 to P12.30 in a month.
• The appointment of Isla Lipana/PricewaterhouseCoopers as “information technology gaming consultant” of Pagcor is getting a pushback from the House, led by games and amusements committee chair Gus Tambunting, who questioned the qualifications of the audit firm to oversee the online lottery operations of the state gaming agency.
As it turned out, Isla Lipana/PricewaterhouseCoopers was the lone bidder for the P10.9-billion contract to provide a lottery system for Luzon, with three other pre-qualified bidders having dropped out of the race.
Heard through the grapevine
Actress and beauty queen Gloria Diaz and her equally “taray” sisters have decided to haul the Dominican fathers overseeing the University of Santo Tomas to court, appointing no less than Marcos lawyer Manuel Lazaro to head the litigation.
The cause of the Diaz beef: Their joint ownership with UST over a sizable property in front of the España campus.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com