BIZ BUZZ: PCCI SBC finds new white knight?

MANILA, Philippines – Looks like things are brewing at this brokerage house.

Earlier this month, the Philippine Stock Exchange released a memorandum saying that PCCI Securities Brokers Corp. (SBC) had filed for the sale of its trading right to bonds.ph Inc.

While this is still up for the approval of the bourse’s board of directors, this essentially means PCCI SBC wants to sell its right to trade on the exchange to bonds.ph.

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The latter was launched in 2020 in a partnership between Union Bank of the Philippines and Philippine Digital Asset Exchange.

It can be noted that bonds.ph, also a project by the Bureau of the Treasury, currently focuses on fixed-income securities (thus the name), and this may be its entry into the equities market.

While we’re not yet sure about all this, the mention of PCCI SBC takes us back to that fateful day in November 2017.

Back then, the company was embroiled in an estafa case filed by no less than a family friend of its owners.

The friends were supposedly duped into investing nearly P20 million, plus another $210,000, into PCCI SBC and promised high returns.

These, however, were allegedly placed into an unrelated forex investment without their knowledge.

A year (or less) later, in 2018, PCCI SBC filed for voluntary six-month suspension with the Capital Markets Integrity Corp.

It was said that parent firm Philippine Commercial Capital Corp. was searching for a new white knight after a takeover deal did not push through.

Could it have finally found its savior, thus the bonds.ph proposal? Abangan! —Meg J. Adonis