After buying a $10 million option to buy a 50.1 percent stake in Petron Corporation, diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corporation gained 3 board seats in Petron.

In a disclosure to the stock exchange, Petron said they held a special board meeting on Thursday afternoon where, besides the 3 newly-elected directors in Petron, 2 new management members were also elected. All five are related to San Miguel.

In all, San Miguel clinched the juiciest post in Petron’s board—the chairmanship—while Ashmore, the other shareholder that currently, and on record, owns 90 percent of Petron through 2 local units retained the top management post.

The new line up of Petron’s 10-man board are as follows:

• Ramon Ang – new
• Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr. – new
• Estelito Mendoza – new
• Bernardino Abes
• Roberto Ongpin
• Eric Recto
• Rod Haddock
• Nicasio Alcantara
• Angelico Salud – independent director
• Emilia Boncodin – independent director

Ramon Ang is the vice chairman, president and chief operating officer of San Miguel Corporation.

Ang took over the director-slot of Carmen Pedrosa, a Philippine Star columnist, who was elected into the Petron board only last October 20.

Ang will also call the shots as Petron’s new chairman and chief executive officer, a position that Nicasio Alcantara previously held since July 2001. Alcantara will stay on as Petron director.

On the other hand, Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr., San Miguel chair and chief executive officer and the chairman emeritus of political party National People’s Coalition, took over the seat of former Petron director Craig Webster, the British head of the legal and transaction management group of Ashmore.

Meantime, Cojuangco’s legal counsel and San Miguel director Estelito Mendoza took over the seat vacated by former environment secretary and presidential adviser Michael Defensor.

Sharing the seats

In 2008, Ashmore, a London-based investment firm, bought over 90 percent stake in Petron through 2 local units. San Miguel, the food and giant conglomerate headed by Ang and Cojuanco, bought an option to purchase one of Ashmore units’ 50.1 percent stake in Petron.

In Petron’s annual stockholders meeting in July, Ashmore clinched 5 board seats in Petron. The remaining seats were held by government representatives since the state-owned Philippine National Oil Corporation still held a 40 percent stake then.

Ashmore clinched the 40 percent stake of PNOC late last year—effectively putting the country’s biggest oil refiner and retailer in private hands.

Despite the privatization, however, several members who were appointed to the Petron board because of their ties to the government remained. These are Bernardino Abes, chairman of state-owned pension fund manager Government Service Insurance System, and Angelico Salud, the former head of the environment department’s corporate arm, the Natural Resources Development Corporation.

Salud, formerly a government nominee to the Petron board, has been elected as an independent director, together with Emilia Boncodin.

Boncodin, a former budget secretary and now public administration and governance professor at the University of the Philippines, chairs Petron’s audit committee.

Management

Eric Recto, former finance undersecretary and an Ashmore nominee to the board, will stay on as president, a position he held since October 7, 2008.

However, he will be joined by 2 newly elected officers who are themselves executives of San Miguel.

Lubin Nepomuceno, the new Petron general manager, is San Miguel’s senior vice president for corporate manufacturing services group.

Emmanuel Erana, on the other hand, is the new chief finance officer of Petron. He is the chief financial officer of San Miguel Pure Foods Company Inc.

Nepomuceno’s and Erana’s posts were newly created.