San Miguel Corp. president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang on Tuesday said the company’s decision to sell telecommunication assets to the duopoly of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Globe Telecom Inc. was a hard decision for the conglomerate.
“I was also disappointed. It was a very hard decision for the company and when we discussed this with the management of telco, everybody was very, very sad,” Ang said in an interview at the sidelines of the annual stockholders’ meeting of San Miguel Brewery Inc.
“The reason we decided to go that was is because we think it will be a long drag battle, court cases etc., and it will be a disservice to our people and consumers by holding on to that frequency and wait for foreign technical partners to come in, which most of them are so scared to come in because of the legal challenges that are in place” Ang added.
PLDT and Globe earlier urged the National Telecommunication Commission to reallocate the 700-megahertz frequency band assigned to San Miguel.
Ang said San Miguel would focus on expanding its core businesses, namely tollways, oil refinery, petrochemicals, food and power generation.
Ang, however, said the company did not make money from the divestment.
“It was just cost recovery, we hardly made anything from our divestment in the telecommunications business,” Ang said.
He said talks between San Miguel, PLDT and Globe started two months ago after negotiations with San Miguel and Australia’s Telstra collapsed.
“They approached us,” Ang said.
San Miguel was also in talks with Globe for a tower sharing agreement. But negotiations did not prosper, according to Ang.
San Miguel under the agreement would sell its telecommunication assets to PLDT and Globe for P70 billion.
PLDT and Globe jointly acquired a 100-percent equity interest in San Miguel’s Vega Telecom Inc. for P52.08 billion and assumed P17.02 billion of liabilities.
Vega owns an 87-percent stake in Liberty Telecom Holdings Inc., the unit formed by San Miguel. Vega also owns direct and indirect stakes in companies, including Bell Telecommunication Philippines Inc., Eastern Telecom Philippines Inc., Express Telecom and Tori Spectrum. They will pay P897 million more for New Century Telecoms Inc. and eTelco Inc.