Companies

By Jerry Maglunog Many are ecstatic about the 8,000-plus Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi), as they believe it is one of the indications that the Philippine economy is really growing.

Mass-housing developer 8990 Holdings Inc. has signed up the Walter Mart Group to operate malls in two of its mixed-used development projects in Metro Manila, 8990 Holdings Chief Executive Officer Januario Jesus Atencio said.

By Riza Lozada Cebuana Lhuillier has opened its first office in the Middle East, located at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), to provide remittances service to the Philippines as well as a liaison office for its partners in the region.

Stock market stakeholders call it as almost “a jinx.” The stock index in the days after the visit of President Aquino to the bourse had refused to rise back to the 8,000 point level, ending the week at 7,946.89 down by 0.02 percent or 1.31 points.

By Riza Lozada Twelve power consortia, led by the Lopez group and San Miguel Corp. (SMC), expressed interest to bid for the contract to become the independent power producer administrator (Ippa) of the 200-megawatt (MW) Mindanao coal-fired thermal power plant.

The Philippine National Bank (PNB) posted a net income of P5.5 billion in 2014, reflecting a 5-percent increase from its previous year’s level-despite the challenging conditions in the local financial markets that caused the bank’s trading gains to decline substantially by 72 percent to P1.3 billion.

Conglomerate Ayala Corp. is boosting its new portfolio of businesses in power generation and transport infrastructure as it targets ramping up profit to P20 billion at least in the next two years.

The San Fernando Regional Trial Court in La Union sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison the manager of a security agency for failing to pay the Social Security (SS) contributions of his security guards.

Bloomberry Resorts Corp. (BRC), owner and operator (through its subsidiaries) of the Solaire Resort and Casino, reported P4.072 billion in net profit last year to reverse a P1.315 billion loss a year ago.

Asian businesses will be challenged this year as a result of the impact of the worsening political situation in some European countries and China’s weakening economy, the outcome of the annual outlook and risk conference of a credit insurance firm indicated.