MANILA: Philippine San Miguel Corporation now controls 68 percent of oil refiner Petron Corporation after it exercised the option to acquire 60 percent of the outstanding shares of Sea Refinery Corporation. The conglomerate plans to raise its stake in Petron to as much as 90 percent if given an opportunity by the Ashmore Group which still holds a block of the oil firm's shares. "We will want to buy more and maybe we can buy up to 90 percent," said SMC president Ramon S. Ang earlier. Ashmore had acquired 90.6 percent of Petron from the Philippine government and Saudi Aramco as well as from the market through a tender offer. Ang said SMC may move to acquire more shares than the 68 percent option in the next two months. He added that if there is an opportunity to buy out Ashmore "we will definitely buy it." He explained that they intend to raise their stake further even though SMC will already own a majority of Petron because of the "good opportunity." "I think the price is very low, undervalued, so if there's opportunity to buy more shares, we will be very interested since we're doing a big investment in Petron right now. We intend to invest a minimum of $2 billion in the next two years and so we see a lot of opportunities in that company," Ang said. The Dec. 15 acquisition, equivalent to 24 million Petron shares, is in line with the Option Agreement dated Dec. 24, 2008. Petron has remaining free float of only 7.5 percent as San Miguel, prior to the exercise of the option, had made a tender offer to minority shareholders. San Miguel had paid Ashmore $10 million for an option to buy into Petron.
