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The Philippine Stock Exchange has elected a new set of board members mostly old faces, who will confront old issues.

With a voter turnout of just 70%, PSE shareholders elected Anabelle Chua, Amor Iliscupidez, Omelita Tiangco, Roberto Atendido, Jose Luis Javier, former Justice Jose Vitug, Cornelio Peralta and Atty. Francisco Lim as non-broker directors of the board.

Elected as broker directors were Ismael Cruz, Vivian Yuchengco, Eddie Gobing, Alejandro Yu, Eusebio Tiangco and David Chua.

Vitug was retained board chairman while Lim also remained as president.

The new board said its primary task is to address the brokers’ collective ownership of the exchange because at present, brokers still own roughly 42% of the bourse which is still way above the legal 20% limit.

The ownership ceiling became a requirement when the bourse demutualized or converted from a member-owned company into a shareholder-owned firm in August 2001.

Lim admitted that bringing down the ownership of brokers will be an uphill battle, as it cannot force the brokers to sell especially in a lackluster market environment.

“One option is to just force the brokers to sell their common shares from 42 down to 20 percent but that’s very difficult because you cannot force a person to sell his property,” said Lim.

The PSE should have complied with the said rule back in 2006, but was unable to do so.

Lim added the PSE would have to do what it can to settle the issue so it can focus on its core objective - to develop the local capital market.

“We are devoting a lot of management time and board time addressing this issue, which time and effort could otherwise be devoted to further developing our stock market,” said Lim.

“The board thought that perhaps this matter should be given at least to the stockholders to have this opportunity for them to be able to see and maybe to react,” said Vitug. Maiki Oreta, ABS-CBN News

Source: ABS-CBN