BIZ BUZZ: Broken Lopez family

The prominent Lopez family is one of the most storied in Philippine history, with interests in key sectors such as power generation and broadcasting tied to the country’s economic growth.

But at the rate that the bitter court battle among the Lopez cousins is progressing, perhaps it is just a matter of time before the corporate family breaks up altogether.

The branch of the late Oscar Lopez has found itself alone in one camp with the other branches—the families of Eugenio Lopez Jr., Manuel Lopez and Presentacion Lopez-Psinakis firmly on the other and determined to remove current Lopez Inc. chief Federico “Piki” Lopez from his post as head of the family holding company.

Their main reason? A pattern of no prior disclosure of material information to the rest of the family, particularly the sale in November last year of a 60-percent stake in First Gen’s gas-related subsidiaries to the Razon-led Prime Infrastructure Capital Inc. for P50 billion and the subsequent purchase by First Gen of a 40-percent stake in Prime’s hydro portfolio for an even bigger P75 billion.

According to the camp led by Eugenio III or Gabby, the longtime head of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., these and previous transactions that had allegedly been kept from them led to their “loss of trust and confidence” in their cousin, thus the vote last February by five of the seven members of the board to remove him and replaced by Gabby’s younger brother, Rafael.

Piki has fought back and is so far holding on to his post by virtue of an injunction that his cousins, however, want the courts to lift.

As far as the Oscar camp is concerned, the current drama is mainly tied to his refusal to inject another P2 billion into ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., which had been weakened by the changing media landscape as well as the revocation of its franchise during the Duterte administration.

With the warring camps refusing to budge, observers in the business community urge the families to consider splitting up the Lopez group so that each family will have their own group to nurture and grow—ABS-CBN to the Geny camp, Rockwell to Manuel’s family, First Holdings to the Oscar group, with Precy’s family continuing to receive dividends.