the Outsider - PSE Points to Ponder

  MerryMart shareholders are being asked to choose before the lights are fully on. The SEC and PSE should not let that pass. In a well-functioning market, a tender offer should sharpen a shareholder’s choice. Sell, hold, or demand more. In MerryMart Consumer Corp.’s case, the choice has instead become oddly murky. DoubleDragon Corp. is offering to acquire MM shares at ₱0.48 apiece , half in cash and half in newly issued DoubleDragon shares valued at ₱9.30 each , after agreeing to buy a 35% block from Injap Investments Inc. and launching a mandatory tender offer for the remaining 65% of MM shares. The tender offer period runs from May 18 to June 16, 2026 , with settlement scheduled for June 24, 2026 .  Yet as shareholders weigh whether to tender, the most basic instruments of judgment appear to be missing. As of this writing, PSE EDGE’s financial reports page shows MerryMart’s latest annual figures as fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 , while its latest quarterly financia...

A good stock exchange does not merely list companies. It disciplines them. That is why First Gen’s recent clarification on its agreements with Prime Infrastructure should alarm anyone who cares about Philippine capital markets. The company has now confirmed that its definitive agreements contain “Change of Management Control” provisions that could force it to sell its hydropower stake at a 25% discount—worth about ₱15.5 billion —and, if that right is exercised, could also expose its remaining gas-plant stake to a further ~₱8 billion discount. That is not gossip. It is a quantified, public admission of a contingent loss with potentially massive consequences for shareholders. Once a listed company itself can put a peso figure on a governance-triggered downside of that scale, the matter ceases to be a private dispute and becomes a capital-markets issue. The temptation is to dismiss this as merely another installment in the Lopez family feud. That would be a mistake. First Gen’s own clari...

  There are moments in capital markets when the most revealing disclosure is the one that never arrives . That is where Lopez Holdings Corporation (LPZ) now appears to stand: a flagship listed holding company whose chairman and chief executive, Federico “Piki” Lopez , was reported to have been removed as president of Lopez Inc. , the group’s private controlling shareholder and ultimate parent, only for a Mandaluyong court to stop the move through injunctive relief. Public reports say the challenged board resolutions were passed on February 27, 2026 , and that the court’s writ dated March 26 barred their enforcement. Those same reports say Lopez Inc. owns 54.74 per cent of LPZ .  And yet, on the public record visible through PSE EDGE and on LPZ’s own disclosures page, the recent stream of LPZ filings does not show a case-related clarification or a dedicated material-information filing on this governance rupture. What the public record does show are routine items: a March 12 ...