Undas and the financial ghosts of 1995

ON All Souls’ Day, millions of Filipino families visit cemeteries to light candles, lay flowers, and remember those who have gone before them.

For our family, remembrance means keeping alive the legacies of my grandfather, Jose Jimenez Burgos Jr.; my father, Eduardo Gacusana Burgos Sr.; and my uncle, Jose Gacusana Burgos Jr., our country’s press freedom icon.

Their lives deserve to be remembered by the generations that follow. But other ghosts deserve attention, too. Some lie not in cemeteries but in desk drawers, inside old envelopes and in corporate records that ordinary investors may struggle to trace.

One such ghost dates back to 1995. That year, C&P Homes Inc., a low-cost housing developer owned by the Villar family, conducted a major public offering valued at approximately P7.31 billion.

Among those who invested was a dear family member. The original application to purchase shares records 700 shares at P12.70 apiece, for a total of P8,890.

The corresponding stock certificate, dated July 31, 1995, bears the number 016838. These are not recollections reconstructed from memory.

The family still has the original purchase application and stock certificate. Nearly three decades later, the documents establish what was bought.

What remains unclear is what happened to those shares after C&P Homes was delisted in 2007. My thanks to my good friend and kumpadre, Jan Mata, for bringing this matter to my attention.

C&P Homes’ story did not end with that certificate.

In 2007, Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc. was listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange as C&P Homes was delisted.

The transaction involved a one-for-one share swap, allowing minority shareholders to exchange each C&P Homes share for one Vista Land share.

The tender offer was priced at P2.46 per share.

The PSE records C&P Homes’ voluntary delisting as effective Sept. 24, 2007.

Delisting does not automatically mean an investment became worthless.

Nor does an old certificate alone establish current ownership or entitlement.

The questions are specific: What happened to these 700 shares? Were they exchanged for Vista Land shares, sold, transferred, or otherwise accounted for? Did the registered shareholder receive the relevant notices and documents? On Oct. 27, the family member emailed Vista Land’s Investor Relations Office using the contact information published on the company’s website, seeking clarification on the shares’ status.

The inquiry deserves a reasonable opportunity to be answered.

The original documents establish the investment; the relevant corporate and transferagent records must establish what followed.

Financial markets operate through disclosures, corporate actions, transfer agents and regulatory rules. Yet what is clear to institutions can become difficult for a small investor to follow decades later.

Shareholders move house, lose correspondence, or misplace paper certificates. Corporate names change, and records become harder to trace.

This is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing. It may reveal a gap between formal compliance and an ordinary investor’s practical ability to establish and exercise legitimate rights.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman and CEO Francisco Lim and PSE Chairman Jose Pardo should consider practical ways to help legacy shareholders trace old investments.

A searchable system for locating unclaimed dividends and legacy shareholdings, subject to appropriate privacy safeguards, would be a useful step.

Regulators and market institutions could also make it easier to trace shares affected by delistings, mergers, share swaps and restructuring.

If nothing remains due, the shareholder should receive a clear explanation.

And if an entitlement exists, there should be a straightforward way to claim it. Pardo’s experience in public-private collaboration is relevant.

He was one of the prime movers of Sulong Pasay, a joint initiative involving the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Employers Confederation of the Philippines, the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc., and the Pasay City government.

Serge Ortiz-Luis Jr. and I, as then acting Pasay City Public Information Office chief, helped bring the collaboration forward with the approval of Pasay Mayor Emi Calixto-Rubiano.

The initiative sought to help revive Pasay’s economy during the pandemic. That same spirit of collaboration could make financial records more accessible to ordinary investors.

For transparency, former Senate president Manny Villar was listed as a principal sponsor at my wedding. We call him Ninong.

His wife, former senator Cynthia Villar, was also addressed as Ninang, in keeping with Filipino custom.

I disclose this connection because the column discusses the corporate history of a company associated with the Villar business group.

It does not change the questions raised here, which deserve answers based on documentary evidence.

The old certificate tells one family’s story. It does not prove that the investment was lost, that an entitlement remains, or that any institution failed in its obligations.

But it raises a legitimate question: Can an ordinary investor still trace the trail of money invested decades ago? Undas reminds us that remembrance is more than ritual.

It is an acknowledgment that people and their stories should not simply disappear. The same principle should apply to small investors.

When a company changes, restructures, or leaves the exchange, shareholders should not be left to piece together the outcome alone.

That yellowing certificate is more than a reminder of an investment made in 1995. It is a test of whether a financial system remembers the small investor after the market has moved on.

Corporate fortunes may endure. But the rights of ordinary shareholders should not disappear into the silence of a desk drawer.

Jun Burgos is a communications executive and columnist with over 20 years’ experience across journalism, diplomacy and financial technology. He previously served as information attaché in Canberra, a consultant to the Philippine Senate on issues management, and a pioneer in domestic eKYC/AML compliance systems.

jburgosmoskito.tmt@gmail.com