Philippines: SyCip, Romulo answer call to act on mega telco deal
By ALB
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Monday, 4 April 2011
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Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company to take controlling share in Digitel
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US$1.60bn
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Synopsis –PLDT, the largest telco in the Philippines and the country’s largest company by net income, has acquired a 51.55% equity stake in rival Digitel. The stake will be acquired from Digitel’s parent company JG Summit Holdings and other shareholders.
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Firm
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Client
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Role
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Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT)
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Philippine counsel
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Romulo, Mabanta, Buenaventura, Sayoc and De los Angeles (Romulo)
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JG Summit Holdings (JGS), the parent company of Digital Telecommunications Philippines (Digitel)
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Philippine counsel
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Filipino heavyweights SyCip and Romulo have advised on one of the country’s largest ever M&As: the US$1.6bn share-swap transaction between Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and Digital Telecommunications Philippines (Digitel), the sole owner of Sun Cellular’s parent company Digitel Mobile Philippines.
PLDT is expected to acquire 3.28 billion shares in Digitel from its parent company JG Summit Holdings (JGS), as well as the zero convertible Digitel bonds held by JGS and convertible into 18.6 billion Digitel shares by the end of Q2 2011. Consideration will be in the form of almost 27.7 million new PLDT shares.
Other Digitel shareholders will have the choice of exchanging their stock for PLDT shares or cash. In total, PLDT is expected to issue almost 30 million new shares in a transaction estimated to be worth more than 74bn pesos.
PLDT is the country’s largest telecommunications company, and the Philippines’ largest company overall by revenue.ALB
Written by Kathryn Crossley