Global Trade Alert

On 25 March 2013, the Philippines Security and Exchange Commission released a new draft of the guidelines for determining foreign ownership in various industries (including real estate, telecommunications and other utilities). The draft is subject to public scrutiny until 25 April 2013.
 
The guidelines are built on a draft published in November 2012 and on a Supreme Court ruling of 2011. According to the new measure, in order to respect the foreign ownership rules, a minimum percentage of Filipino shares applies to the total number of outstanding shares of stock, whether entitled to vote the election of directors or not. Until now, Filipino ownership ceilings only existed for shares with voting rights and some listed companies had issued non-voting preferred shares to avoid passing the threshold.