Philippines' Union Bank to buy savings bank

About P5.7 billion shares in City Savings Bank has been transferred to Union Bank of the Philippines.

Together with its wholly owned subsidiary Pilmico Foods Corporation, Aboitiz Equity Ventures owns 99.54 percent of Cebu-based thrift bank CitySavings. AEV is also UnionBank’s largest shareholder, with a 45 percent ownership.

“We believe very strongly that repositioning our financial services portfolio under UnionBank is the right strategic move to optimize value and growth opportunities,” said AEV president Erramon Aboitiz.

He added that “we envision UnionBank and CitySavings complementing each other’s management strengths, augmenting technological capabilities, and leveraging on each other’s financial capabilities.”

For his part, UnionBank chairman Justo Ortiz said “our acquisition of CitySavings is aligned with UnionBank’s long-term strategy of building a great retail bank.”

Ortiz noted that “CitySavings has a business model that gives us a strategic opportunity to expand our customer franchise, and an existing management team we have full confidence in.”

After the acquisition, CitySavings will remain as a separate corporate entity, keeping its company name as well as its brand identity of simple and straightforward banking.

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