| Headline: Equitable PCI still faces a credibility problem Source: Euromoney Date: September 2001
The merged entity Equitable PCI, in existence for only two years, has rarely been out of the headlines. In 1999, George Go, president of a small family-run bank called Equitable, decided he wanted a larger piece of the action. In fact, he wanted to be at the helm of the biggest bank in the Philippines. And he was prepared to do anything to get there. Go approached his close friend, president Joseph Erap Estrada, and told him how he needed help buying PCI Bank, the country’s third largest. Estrada agreed. A few days later Equitable launched what can only be described as a severely leveraged buy-out of its much larger counterpart. Thanks to Estrada, government money was used to ramp up Equitable’s price. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||