Andrew Tan’s liquor empire

FOR the information of the readers of The Manila Times who also find time to include Due Diligencer in their reading habit, I could not categorically define for them the 10-percent minimum public ownership required of listed companies under the rules imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). All I know about ownership profiles I learned from postings on the website of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) as to the identities of individual stockholders.

However, I enjoy some kind of advantage over the public because from time to time, I receive information not otherwise easily available to them. For instance, recently I was told about the use of offshore companies by listed companies to circumvent the SEC’s rule on the 10-percent minimum public ownership. Certainly, I have no way of researching on these leads because these so-called offshore stockholders are not covered by the market’s full disclosure rule and thus their owners are not disclosable.