MANILA - Diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corporation is following the footsteps of the Sys whose empire now includes a commercial bank.

While the Sys' cash-rich mall business spawned a retail behemoth that eventually needed a bank to service its finance-related transactions, San Miguel is banking on the same synergy with Bank of Commerce (BoC).

San Miguel owns a controlling 51 percent of the mid-sized bank through its property unit San Miguel Properties, Inc. and its retirement fund.

San Miguel's president Ramon S. Ang said in a statement that Bank of Commerce could tap an additional--and ready--market: San Miguel's own retail network, specifically that of recently acquired oil refiner and retailer Petron.

“We see potential projects we can pursue with Petron. There’s a fit between retail banking and Petron’s retail network of over 1500 service stations,” Ang said.

The bank is now servicing the cash management needs of San Miguel, and is financing the working capital requirements of San Miguel's own dealers and suppliers.

These approaches are much like those of Banco de Oro, the Sys' bank, which has captured the cash management, working capital, trade, foreign exchange, and other financing and banking needs of almost everyone who does business with any Sy-owned company.

From a mid-sized bank in the nineties, Banco de Oro grew by leaps and bounds after several mergers and acquisions. It is now the Philippines' biggest banks in terms of assets, loans and deposits. The family members and their hired professionals explained that their acquisition binge that started in the early part of the decade is an effort to grow Banco de Oro to achieve economies of scale.

San Miguel and the Sys' holding company, SM Investments Corporation, are the respective second and third most profitable listed companies in the country.

The food-turned-power conglomerate poured P2 billion in additional equity into Bank of Commerce this May. “There are a lot more banking services that [Bank of Commerce] provide [San Miguel Corp], but we need to invest and upgrade the bank’s IT systems, management capability and branch locations to make the bank more responsive and compatible to our business needs,” said Ang.

Bank of Commerce has jumped from a mid-sized bank to the country's 15th biggest bank in terms of asset as of March 2009. Draggin it, however, is a 6.57 percent non-performing loans ratio, the seventh highest in the industry.