Ramon Ang has been trying to own a piece of Philippine media for more than a decade. This week, he finally got a piece of something Lopez, just not the piece anyone expected.
He has chased a broadcast network, been rumored to be behind a cable news channel, and once got close enough to a newspaper deal that the price was already being haggled over. None of those closed. What closed instead, on Monday, August 10, was a 25.68% stake in Lopez Inc., the private company that sits at the very top of the Lopez Group, bought from the family branch led by Eugenio “Gabby” Lopez III rather than negotiated with any media owner at all.
It is not the entry point expected, and it is not the first time Ang has shown up near a Lopez-controlled business either. Media is the chapter people remember, but it is not the oldest one.
Not his first time near a Lopez asset
In October 2008, San Miguel Corporation (SMC), then a food and beer conglomerate in its early years of diversifying under Ramon Ang, bought the government’s 27% stake in Manila Electric Company (Meralco) out from under Manuel V. Pangilinan, who believed he had already secured it. Ang had flown to Cebu the weekend before the deal closed to meet GSIS president Winston Garcia directly, after GSIS’s long, public fight with the Lopez family over control of Meralco’s board. (READ: The Lopezes, presidents, and the cost of dissent)
