Rufino-Prieto firms cannibalizing the financially ailing Philippine Daily Inquirer?

Documents show Philippine Daily Inquirer’s majority owners, the Rufino-Prieto Clan, are using their other family-owned companies to cannibalize what little is left of the newspaper company’s assets, at the expense of minority stockholders who may be left with nothing if and when the media firm declares bankruptcy.

UP Naming Binarat? UP gets only ₱22/sqm monthly from UP-Ayala Technohub

The University of the Philippines System’s 2018 Commission on Audit Report [1] states that UP has two Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects with Ayala Land: the UP-Ayala Technohub along Commonwealth and the UP Town Center along Katipunan.

The two projects are business deals, so common sense dictates that the revenue sharing structure should be commensurate to how much each business partner invested in the venture.

Documents, however, show that it isn’t the case, as Ayala keeps the lion’s share of profits.

[Full Disclosure: I was a Math Major in the University of the Philippines - Diliman.]

ABS-CBN’s Franchise Renewal: Will Lopezes make ultimate sacrifice to save thousands of jobs?

Most of us are already familiar and have a working understanding of the ABS-CBN franchise renewal issue, but to give you a refresher, here’s the basic issue.

Every free-to-air TV or radio station is required to secure a congressional franchise in the form of a Republic Act, a franchise that usually lasts for 25 years[1]. A new franchise (READ: A New Republic Act) is needed to operate after those 25 years.

ABS-CBN received its franchise on 30 March 1995 via RA No. 7966[2], so it needs to get a new one before RA No. 7966 expires 25 years later on 30 March 2020.

And that’s the problem.