Philippines

Philippine authorities are probing the financial transactions of a law office and a tour operator for possible connections to Wirecard, the collapsed German payments firm, and its former chief operating officer Jan Marsalek, a government official said, the Financial Times reported.

A Philippines-based firm seeking to recapitalise the insolvent and in-receivership Australia-listed Asian casino operator Silver Heritage Group Ltd, is said to have obtained from Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, a “letter of no objection” to the Philippine firm acquiring – via a subsidiary – a 92-percent interest in the casino firm, GGRAsia reported. The news was given in a Wednesday filing to the Philippine Stock Exchange by DFNN Inc. The latter company is said to own 18.98 percent of HatchAsia Inc, the firm seeking to recapitalise Silver Heritage.

The full extent of the coronavirus pandemic-inflicted damage on Philippine companies and the local financial system will only begin to manifest itself over the next couple of years, as there is always “a lag time before you see the dead bodies,” INQUIRER.net reported. As such, banks and their large corporate borrowers will likely need to enter into contentious and difficult negotiations in the medium term to rehabilitate loans that would otherwise go into default as a result of the ongoing public health crisis. “[Banks’] problem loans have almost doubled in July. Was that the peak?

BDO Unibank Inc., the Philippines’ largest lender by assets, posted its first loss in more than a decade after bolstering provisions for bad loans due to the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The bank said its net loss totaled 4.48 billion pesos ($91 million) in the three months ended June, compared with profit of 10.4 billion pesos a year earlier. It booked provisions of 22.4 billion pesos in the first half, in anticipation of potential delinquencies stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

Local bank creditors of Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines (HHIC-Phil), the local unit of Korea’s shipbuilding giant Hanjin, expect resolution of the shipbuilder’s debt within the year. The local Hanjin owes five local banks a total of $412 million, considered as the biggest corporate default in the country, the Manila Bulletin reported. Among the creditor banks, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) has the biggest loan exposure of $140 million followed by state-owned Land Bank of the Philippines with an estimated $80 million.

All offers from potential buyers of a strategically located but debt-laden Philippine shipyard will be welcome, the trade minister said on Thursday, ruling out barring Chinese firms over national security fears, Reuters reported.