Subject SSS, GSIS holdings to challenge—labor group

Dismayed by audit reports showing the Social Security System (SSS) and Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) may not have gotten the best deal for their members when they sold their Meralco holdings for only P90 per share, the country’s biggest labor union proposed that the two state pension funds submit their marketable securities to a “Swiss challenge.”

“A Swiss challenge will allow the discovery of other potential investors who may be willing to acquire at higher prices the securities held by SSS or GSIS,” said Trade Union Congress of the Philippines president Ernesto Herrera in a statement.

The TUCP issued the statement in reaction to a Commission on Audit report that questioned the sale by SSS of its 62,990,638 shares in  power firm Meralco for P5.66 billion to a newly formed entity with net assets of only P60 million.

The Meralco shares were sold at P90 each to Global 5000 Investment Corp. in December 2008.

Meralco’s stock closed last Friday at P269 per share. Jerome Aning