Twenty local and foreign banks have slaked Davao City-based businessman Dennis Uy’s thirst for takeovers and mergers in the first two years of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Uy, a close friend and political supporter of President Duterte, has already tripled his borrowings to P85 billion as of 2017 but has shown little sign of slowing down his torrid pace of acquisitions as he continued to gobble up more targets this year: from the FamilyMart convenience store to wildcat firm PXP Energy Corp. to the local Ferrari distributor Autostrada.
Based on his filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Uy’s single biggest loan is for P34 billion from Banco De Oro (BDO), Philippine National Bank (PNB), and Bank of China-Grand Cayman Branch (BOC-GC).
Uy used the 10-year loan, with an interest rate of between 7.61 perent and 8.98 percent, to buy out a Kuwaiti group from the 177-hectare Clark Global City Corp.
This loan accounts for nearly half of the P74 billion term loan of Uy as of end-2017.