A DIRECTOR of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) who is also an official of PLDT Inc. will not be involved in deciding the outcome of the bourse’s probe of the trading of shares in the telecommunications company.
“Ms. [Anabelle L.] Chua is one of the 15 [PSE] directors. And Ms. Chua is a very righteous and forthright person; she will not get involved in this case,” PSE President and Chief Executive Officer Ramon S. Monzon said in an interview with BusinessWorld.
Ms. Chua is the senior vice president, chief financial officer and chief risk management officer of PLDT. She is also a member of the PSE’s board of directors.
“I know her, she will excuse herself if anything is brought to the board or voted on by the board,” he added.
PSE is currently investigating the issues that have risen from PLDT’s budget overrun and shares sell-off alongside Capital Markets Integrity Corp. (CMIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to Mr. Monzon, there shouldn’t be a question on the PSE’s investigation as the entity that is doing the investigation of the trading of PLDT shares is CMIC.
“Number one, the actual entity or organization doing the investigation of the trading of shares is CMIC. It is totally independent from the PSE. [It has a] separate set of directors, [and a] separate set of management,” Mr. Monzon said.
“But we are also doing our own investigation on the adequacy and timelines of the disclosure. And that’s being done by the management,” he added.
CMIC serves as the independent audit, surveillance and compliance arm of the PSE.
Meanwhile, Mr. Monzon said that he expects the length of CMIC’s investigation to be longer as it had been asked to expand its review.
“We’ve asked CMIC to expand the investigation of the trading at least for the whole month of November up to last Friday. I [don’t know] how long it will take as they are working with the SEC on that,” Mr. Monzon said.
“The investigation is ongoing and it will take time because they will have to get back to the foreign brokers,” he added.
On the PSE’s part, Mr. Monzon said that they have asked PLDT to clarify all the press releases that the bourse operator has seen in the papers since the firm’s disclosure on Friday.
“There are some things that we wanted to know because on one hand there are statements made by their chairman which in some cases ay iba naman ang sinasabi ng PLDT (are different from what PLDT said),” Mr. Monzon.
“So, we are asking them to clarify some of the statements they made so we can determine kung meron ba talagang lapses ang PLDT sa kanilang disclosures (if there are really lapses in PLDT’s disclosures),” he added. — Justine Irish D. Tabile