“If that happens in the Philippines – the superbank, the monolithic bank that comes out of the merger, it collapses – what happens to the economy? As it is,Diokno, on the contrary, viewed the collapse of Credit Suisse as further proof that government banks should be consolidated.
“I think Landbank and DBP merger won’t have much impact on privately-owned institutions because we compete in different markets. Of course, we do overlap in some areas, but it’s not an overlap in most markets,” he said during a media briefing ahead of theUnion Bank of the Philippines , the country’s ninth largest bank in total assets and similar in size to the DBP, also does not expect the merger to directly affect them.
“The mandate was to take on big infra projects. The other one, the mandate is agriculture. Now, the problem is, over the last few years, neither of them have fulfilled the mandate. I’m just quoting the articles of the newspapers,” Bautista said. “The problem when you have that is, you may lose focus.
With the livelihood of thousands of employees on the line, the Land Bank of the Philippines Employees Association and DBP Employees’ Union have both raised concerns regarding the merger, according to a Senate resolution filed by Senator Risa Hontiveros. Landbank management was said to have violated the terms of its collective negotiations agreements by failing to consult union leaders before pushing for the merger.
To support this statement, the GCG pointed to a Supreme Court ruling in “Lagman vs Executive Secretary,” and cited Section 5 of the GOCC Governance Act of 2011; Section 17, ArticleVII of the 1987 Constitution, and Section 2, Chapter 2, Book III of the Administrative Code of 1987.