The most revealing feature of First Gen’s recent governance controversy is not the family drama. It is the architecture of control. In its clarification to the Philippine Stock Exchange, First Gen confirmed that its agreements with Prime Infrastructure contain Change of Management Control provisions that could force the company to sell its hydropower stake at a 25 percent discount , worth about ₱15.5bn , and could also expose its remaining gas-plant stake to a further ~₱8bn discount if Prime Infra exercises that right. In corporate language, that is not a trivial covenant. It is a deterrent with teeth. And whatever label one prefers — “key man clause” or “poison pill” — it functions as a defense against a hostile reordering of control. Strictly speaking, First Gen’s clause is not a classic poison pill. It is not a shareholder-rights plan of the Delaware kind, where all investors except a hostile bidder get discounted shares once an ownership threshold is crossed. But in econom...
The quiet compounding machine In Philippine banking, dividends rarely make for gripping prose. Balance sheets matter more than bravado; prudence beats spectacle. Yet at East West Banking Corporation, the Gotianun family’s mid‑tier lender, the numbers are beginning to speak with unusual clarity. From 2022 to 2026, EastWest’s regular cash dividend rose from ₱0.40 per share to ₱0.82 , implying a compound annual growth rate of roughly 19.7% . That is not a one‑off windfall, but a four‑year pattern. The more interesting question is whether the bank’s fundamentals, as laid bare in its 2025 Annual Report , genuinely justify such compounding—or whether the dividend is merely running ahead of the balance sheet. The evidence suggests the former. From caution to confidence The early years tell a restrained story. In 2022 , EastWest paid ₱0.40 per share , equivalent to total cash dividends of roughly ₱900 million , at a time when net income stood at ₱4.6 billion . The payout was conservative...