Volkswagen’s seemingly harmless April Fool’s joke has caused quite the PR nightmare, as the company now finds itself being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and whether or not the PR gag has influenced its stock market price.
According to a report by Der Spiegel, the Volkswagen Group confirmed that the SEC had requested information from its subsidiary, Volkswagen Group of America. The investigations are at an early stage, and the automaker is cooperating with authorities.
On March 29, VW America announced in an unintentionally unfinished press release that it would officially rename itself to “Voltswagen” beginning April 29, seemingly as a bid to mark its electric offensive.
A finished version of the press release was later issued, complete with a quote from VW America’s CEO Scott Keogh who celebrated the name change. Links to this press release were also emailed to various high-profile journalists in the industry.

Considering the timing of the release, it was possible that the whole thing was just an April Fool’s joke, but VW America spokesperson Mark Gillies assured the media that the name change was not a prank. The story was then picked up by many media outlets, but the very next day, VW revealed that it was just an April Fool’s joke.
This caused a media firestorm – major news outlets were furious and accused Volkswagen of misleading them. The automaker said the gag, however unusual, was “justified” because it had just launched the ID.4 electric vehicle in the country. The joke was also supposed to be about “having fun,” and it was not meant to influence the company’s stock market price.
Der Spiegel said the Voltswagen stunt is considered a failure and many leading US media are upset. The bogus press release has also cost the group’s credibility, and internal corporate guidelines may have been violated as well. It was soon reported that the ruse was developed by VW’s lead marketing agency Johannes Leonardo.

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Prior to the latest discovery hearing, the SEC sent out requests to foreign regulators to seek documents related to Ripple from their respective countries.
The blockchain firm believes that the financial watchdog exercised the weight of the US government, arguing that the memoranda of understanding are compulsory.
The Judge has yet to provide a ruling after a case precedent was introduced to the lawsuit. 

While Ripple executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen filed motions to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) case, there is still a month before it would be decided. 
SEC attempted to gain an unfair advantage
The $1.3 billion lawsuit filed by the SEC against Ripple Labs continues as the XRP community flocked to listen in on the discovery hearing. 
The agency has been sending formal government requests to other foreign regulators to get documents from companies in respective countries that work with Ripple and subsequently forward them to the SEC. 
Ripple found out about the requests directly from one of the companies and moved to stop the SEC from sending the requests since it is outside the Rules of Federal Procedure. The main issue discussed in the discovery hearing is whether the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Federal government and foreign governments is mandatory or voluntary. 
Jorge Tenreiro, the senior trial attorney at the SEC, stated that the MoU process was not compulsory. However, the flow of securities and money does not stop at a country’s borders. The agency added that it does not intend to disclose the content of the MoU requested since this information is privileged. 
Ripple responded that the SEC was attempted to “gain an unfair advantage” and that the requests do not sound “voluntary” at all. The company argued that the MoU process is compulsory and asserted that the agency is leveraging the “weight and power of the US government.” 
Judge Sarah Netburn told Ripple:

My understanding is that although the foreign company must comply with the request by its government, the foreign government does not have to comply with the SEC’s request.

Attorney Jeremy Hogan commented that the reason for this ruling is because the Judge believes it would provide the litigating parties equal power. The Ripple attorney responded that there are bases for not providing the documents since the requests are not voluntary, primarily when smaller countries deal with a large economy like the United States. 
Judge to review case precedent before ruling
The legal battle sits on case precedent SEC v. Badian, where Judge Robert Pitman ruled that the regulator could use these types of MoU requests. SEC attorney Jorge Tenreiro also represented the financial watchdog in the Badian case and described the ruling:

Thus in SEC v. Badian, Magistrate Judge Pitman considered and rejected defendant’s request that in an enforcement action, the Federal rules require that the SEC be Ordered to cease using Requests for use in litigation.

The cross-border remittance firm distinguished itself from the Badian case, stating that the defense attorney made a mistake and that told the Judge that foreign governments were voluntary – which was false. Since the case was ruled based on incorrect facts, Ripple argued that the Judge should not look to the case for persuasive authority on the XRP lawsuit. 
At the end of the hearing, the Judge did not provide a ruling immediately. Attorney Hogan believes that Judge Netburn would like to take a look at the Badian file again to see if Ripple is distinguishable from the case. After considering the factors of the case, the Judge will announce her verdict in the coming days.

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ID check required for new crypto accounts
‘Dip-chip’ machine to be used from July

Opening of new cryptocurrency accounts may slow in the second half of this year as the Anti-Money Laundering Office (Amlo) announced local digital exchanges must verify their customers’ identities through a “dip-chip” machine that requires clients to be physically present.
The dip-chip requirement comes into effect in July, said Poramin Insom, co-founder and director of Satang Corp.
As of April 26, there were 697,780 cryptocurrency accounts nationwide, a surge from 160,000 at the end of last year.
“Most digital asset exchanges are still busy preparing their systems to accommodate the growing number of clients as new account applications continue to flow in. However, this growth may be curbed if the application process becomes more complicated,” said Mr Poramin.
Digital asset intermediaries plan to discuss the issue at a forum held by the Thailand Digital Asset Operators Trade Association, a self-regulated organisation, to gather questions for further discussion with government entities such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Amlo.
Every step in the digital account opening process is currently done electronically, starting from submitting the application form to verifying a customer’s identity and account approval.
However, the exchanges still need time to approve an account because they must recheck and determine if documents submitted by customers comply with the SEC’s regulations for the know-your-customer (KYC) process and suitability test.
An applicant’s documents must be rechecked by relevant government agencies and if officials find a customer has submitted fake documents or is residing in a country where cryptocurrency trading is banned, the application will be rejected.
Mr Poramin said digital asset exchanges have a duty to report any transaction worth over 1.8 million baht under the money laundering law, and must set up a database for inspections by regulators.
The Anti-Money Laundering Act came into force in 1999 and requires financial institutions, entities operating financial-related businesses, and legal professionals such as investment advisers and real estate brokerages to report any transaction meeting its requirements, and preserve documentation and data pertaining to transactions as evidence for 5-10 years.
In addition, around 6,000 gold shops nationwide are required to ask their customers to show their ID cards when purchasing or selling gold worth over 100,000 baht in cash.
Thanarat Pasawongse, chief executive of Hua Seng Heng, said most large gold shops have been using ID card dip-chip machines for identity verification for 4-5 years because it is more convenient than photocopying.
Data collected from a dip-chip machine can also be used in customer relationship management. For example, when a customer makes a transaction online, they can directly update their personal information on their mobile device or computer.
“However, some customers still prefer to maintain their privacy,” said Mr Thanarat.
He said large gold shops have a higher chance of being randomly checked by regulators, so they need to prepare a verification method that is more stringent than required from regulators to be safe.
“I understand the intention of officials, but we have difficulty complying with the current criteria,” said Mr Thanarat. “Gold prices have been constantly increasing and just four baht of gold nowadays is worth 100,000 baht. I hope the minimum trigger point will not be reduced.”
Cash transactions worth over 100,000 baht also require customers to show their ID cards, while transactions worth over 2 million require business operators to file a report with Amlo. For “suspicious” transactions, the operators file a report without informing the customer.
Jitti Tangsitpakdee, president of the Gold Traders Association, said the association is expediting the training of gold shops in Thailand to prevent accidents, as they are now legally obligated to perform risk assessment, case management and customer screening.

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The prices of these stocks soared as Chinese firms’ inflated earnings … and attracted an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission …

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Hard-up borrowers already at their wits’ end trying to scrape together enough money to pay their debts caught a much-needed break last week when the Department of Justice warned online lending companies against employing unfair debt collection practices and cyber harassment.
The DOJ Office of Cybercrime (OOC) said in a public advisory issued April 23 that online lending and financing companies are criminally liable for employing illegal means to strong-arm debtors into paying their debt.
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What are these illegal practices? Accessing the debtors’ phone book/contacts list to send them messages about the delay or failure to pay debts, for one. Also, shaming borrowers by posting their personal and sensitive personal information online; threatening them with death or physical injuries if they fail to settle their account balances; and use of profane language through text messages directly sent to the debtors and to the debtors’ references to shame them.
“Due to the increasing number of reports received and endorsed to the [DOJ-OOC] involving unfair debt collection practices and cyber harassment committed by online lending companies (OLCs), the DOJ-OOC issued a Public Advisory dated 23 April 2021 enumerating the acts that would qualify as unfair debt collection practices and cyber harassment, and the corresponding violations that victims may file before the appropriate government agencies,” the DOJ said.

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Charito A. Zamora, officer in charge of the DOJ-OOC, listed down in the advisory the actions that victims of overzealous collectors can take under various laws—the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, the Data Privacy Act of 2012, the Revised Penal Code, and the Securities and Exchange Commission Memorandum Circular No. 18, Series of 2019—and the government agencies they can run to.
The National Bureau of Investigation-Cybercrime Division (NBI-CCD) and the Philippine National Police-

Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG), for example, can investigate cases involving threats of violence and the use of obscenities, while the National Privacy Commission (NPC) oversees cases of malicious disclosure or publication of names and other personal information of tardy borrowers.
Punishments include imprisonment of prision mayor or a fine of at least P200,000 for illegal access to a debtor’s phone book or contacts list; and imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of at least P500,000 for unauthorized use of personal information.
Complaints may also be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which in 2019 issued its own memorandum circular penalizing unfair debt collection practices. The SEC said these include the use of obscenities, insults, or profane language; publication of the names and other personal information of the borrowers; and the use of any false representation or deceptive means to collect or attempt to collect any debt or to obtain information concerning a borrower.
Financing and lending companies found violating the circular face penalties ranging from P25,000 for lending companies and P50,000 for financing companies for the first offense, to P50,000 and P100,000 for the second offense, and up to P1 million for repeated offenses. They also face possible suspension of lending and financial activities for 60 days, or even outright revocation of their authority to operate as a financing or lending company. The SEC issued the circular in 2019 after likewise receiving numerous complaints against financing and lending companies said to be harassing borrowers by employing abusive and unethical means to collect debts.
“To combat or prevent the further commission of unfair debt collection practices and cyber harassments, the DOJ-OOC also encourages the public to report erring OLCs to the NBI-CCD, PNP-ACG, NPC and the SEC,” the DOJ added.
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With the COVID-19 pandemic leaving millions of workers either jobless or with reduced pay due to quarantine measures that have adversely affected thousands of companies, the number of borrowers who will fall behind on their payments will only rise.
Certainly, financing and lending companies as well as the third party collection agencies they hire are well within their rights to use all reasonable and legally permissible means to collect debts due them under legal loan agreements.
The SEC emphasized, however, that in the exercise of their rights to collect what is due, “they must observe good faith and reasonable conduct and refrain from engaging in unscrupulous and untoward acts,” especially now that the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s economic crisis continue to wreak havoc, preventing millions of Filipinos from going back to work and regaining some measure of stability and breathing space in their finances.
Shaming, threatening, and harassing them are against the law, and will not get lending companies any closer to getting their money back.

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The Philippines has made significant progress in creating a unified supervision scheme with an end goal of protecting consumers and combatting the proliferation of investor scams in the future, according to the head of the interagency group of regulators.
In a statement, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno, who also chairs the Financial Sector Forum (FSF), said inroads have been made by working committees in the areas of financial sector supervision, financial technology and consumer protection and financial literacy.
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The FSF is a group comprised of the BSP, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Insurance Commission and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation.“The member-agencies of the [FSF] are committed to implement financial sector reforms to promote effective and seamless supervision across the financial sector,” Diokno said.
“We will leverage on our cooperative arrangement to align standards and expectations and ensure that we continue to espouse an enabling environment toward an inclusive recovery and economic growth,” he added.

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Following the publication of the Financial System Stability Assessment prepared by the International Monetary Fund, the FSF took note of the interagency recommendations of the multilateral institution aimed at promoting effective supervision in the financial sector.
These recommendations cover gaps in legal power of financial sector supervisors related to bank secrecy laws and conglomerate supervision, which were also earlier cited in the joint IMF-World Bank assessment of the BSP’s observance of the Basel core principles for effective banking supervision.

The results of the assessment will feed into the development of a strategic roadmap for the financial sector.
The member-agencies of the FSF also discussed the key activities that will be undertaken under the signed memorandum of agreement on the establishment of a cooperative oversight framework on fintech innovation.
In particular, existing regulations will be reviewed to harmonize baseline components and controls in the areas of customer onboarding and consumer protection across the financial sector.
During last week’s meeting, existing initiatives of the FSF to strengthen information exchange across agencies were also discussed cognizant that this is critical in strengthening risk surveillance activities in the financial sector.
In addition, the member-agencies committed to continue the FSF’s work on conducting financial learning programs and producing related materials for varied segments of the market.
In line with this, the FSF, in collaboration with the Commission on Higher Education, the National Economic and Development Authority and Philam Foundation are designing a general elective course module which will cover basic concepts on financial management, banking, insurance, securities and digital finance to equip students with practical skills on making prudent financial decisions.
— Daxim L. Lucas INQ

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Bisnow Archive
Vornado CEO Steven Roth at REITWeek 2014
One of the giants of the real estate world has offered to resign his seat as the chairman of the board of one of the publicly traded real estate investment trusts he helped found.
A majority of JBG Smith’s shareholders voted Thursday to remove Vornado CEO Steven Roth from the REIT’s Board of Trustees. 
The vote came at the REIT’s annual meeting and was revealed Friday afternoon in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The filing said Roth offered to resign from the board following the vote, in accordance with the company’s governance rules.
Of the roughly 119 million shareholder votes, 28.8 million voted for Roth while 90.7 million voted against him. All 11 other board nominees received more than 113 million affirmative votes. 
JBG Smith declined to comment on the vote. The REIT is scheduled to release its first-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon.
The company became a public REIT in July 2017 upon the closing of a merger between D.C.-based developer The JBG Cos. and a spinoff of Vornado’s D.C. portfolio. Vornado’s portfolio included a large concentration of properties in Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood that JBG Smith used in 2018 to land Amazon HQ2. 
Roth was JBG Smith’s largest shareholder at the time of the REIT’s IPO, owning 4.5 million shares, or 3.25% of the company, according to SEC filings. It doesn’t appear that Roth has sold JBG Smith stock since the IPO. 
Friday’s filing doesn’t reveal which major shareholders voted against Roth, and no investors appear to have made public statements calling for him to be removed. But filings from 2020, when the shareholders approved Roth with the lowest vote total of any board member, show which shareholders voted against him then.  
Affiliates of JPMorgan Chase and State Street Corp., two of the REIT’s largest institutional shareholders, voted against Roth in 2020. John Hancock Funds, SPDR Index Shares Funds, Calvert Variable Products and Goldman Sachs Trust III also voted against him last year. Vanguard and BlackRock, two other major institutional shareholders, voted for Roth last year. 
“It is not clear what, if any, will change by Mr. Roth’s resignation offer from JBGS’ board,” financial analyst firm Green Street Advisors wrote in a report released Sunday, outlining the company’s HQ2 win and subsequent focus on multifamily development. “The vote results and resulting shakeup at the Chairman’s seat will likely do little to change this overall strategic direction of JBGS.” 
The REIT has added one new board member since the 2020 vote. In February, it appointed Phyllis Caldwell, an independent financial services adviser, to its board. In December, the company promoted three executives to C-suite roles, including Chief Financial Officer Moina Banerjee.
JBG Smith has focused much of its attention since going public on building out Amazon HQ2 and a host of additional mixed-use development in the surrounding National Landing area, but it has remained active throughout the D.C. region.
The REIT has delivered multiple apartment buildings in D.C.’s Shaw and Capitol Riverfront neighborhoods, it delivered an office building in Bethesda where it moved its headquarters, and it filed plans last week for an 805-unit project in Northeast D.C.’s NoMa neighborhood. 
In Roth’s April letter to Vornado investors, he discussed the possibility of another spinoff from Vornado’s core New York City retail and office holdings, focused on the REIT’s development pipeline around Manhattan’s Penn Station.
Roth is the chairman of Vornado’s board and serves as CEO and chairman of Alexander’s Inc., another publicly traded REIT. He serves as an independent trustee for Urban Edge Properties, a REIT that was spun off of Vornado’s shopping center holdings in 2015. 
Ethan Rothstein and Jay Rickey contributed to this report.

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The stock-trading mania of early 2021 lifted revenue at Robinhood Markets Inc. to new heights.
When its customers buy and sell stocks and options, Robinhood routes those orders to high-speed traders, which pay the startup brokerage for the right to execute many of those trades. That business, known as payment for order flow, generated about $331 million in revenue for Robinhood in the first quarter, according to a securities filing late last week. That is more than triple the $91 million Robinhood brought in from payment for order flow in the first quarter of 2020.
Millions of amateur investors downloaded Robinhood’s app in the first quarter, drawn in by the run-up in meme stocks popular on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum. Such rapid growth in users and revenue is likely to appeal to potential investors in Robinhood’s coming initial public offering, one of the most eagerly awaited listings of the year. The strength of its business up until January prompted new and existing investors to pump a whopping $3.4 billion into the company just three months ago.
Robinhood needed that capital infusion to keep supporting the Reddit-fueled market rally. After the clearinghouse that helped complete Robinhood’s trades asked it to post billions of dollars in additional collateral that it didn’t have on hand, Robinhood restricted users’ ability to purchase shares in GameStop Corp. and other highflying stocks at the end of January.
That decision spawned scores of customer complaints, dozens of lawsuits against Robinhood and a social-media campaign to delete the app around the beginning of February. But those trends didn’t end up denting Robinhood’s business. February revenue from payments for order flow at Robinhood totaled about $121 million, or nearly 7% more than what it earned in January.

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Fintech Unicorn Marqeta is reportedly planning to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) later this year, according to a report from BI.
Oakland-based payments processor Marqeta is valued at around $4.3 billion. The company provides debit cards to firms such as DoorDash and Instacart. Marqeta also offers services to major banking institutions like Goldman Sachs.
Marqeta said it intends to share its IPO plans with the general public on May 14, 2021. The Fintech firm is getting ready for a listing at some point next month, according to BI which cited sources familiar with the matter.
In February 2021, Marqeta had confidentially filed its public offering prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Goldman has been confirmed to be leading the firm’s listing with assistance from JPMorgan. .
Marqeta had secured $150 million in capital in May of last year, leading to a $4.3 billion valuation. However, the firm’s valuation might increase as much as 3x to anywhere between $10 to $15 billion when it moves forward with its IPO.
Company Chief Executive Jason Gardner launched Marqueta back in 2010, which was about the same time that other Fintechs such as Stripe and SoFi began offering services as well.
Marqeta’s business involves providing debit cards along with various other financial products to large firms such as Square and DoorDash. Instacart consumers are also able to used cards that Marqeta offers, in order to buy groceries instead of covering the cost of the items upfront. The payment cards come with a zero balance. The amount being transacted and the store details are confirmed before the funds are transferred.
Previously, on-demand delivery firms used to give their drivers prepaid debit cards with a large balance on them, Gardner noted during an interview with BI. He explained that there was no way or mechanism to control whether a driver was purchasing the right order, or buying food items for themselves.
Marqeta generates earnings from charging transaction fees along with making money from other services.
Since Marqeta began offering services (around 10 years ago), it has managed to double its revenue each year since 2016. The company reports issuing more than 270 million cards. Marqeta now has more than 500 workers on its payroll which includes around 200 staff members recruited in 2020.
Marqeta’s business has been doing well during the COVID crisis, because the on-demand delivery sector has grown significantly with many people ordering from their homes (staying indoors as much as possible to avoid the further spread of the virus).
Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart are some of Marqeta’s biggest clients. Chinese payments firm  Alipay is also a client, as it uses Marqeta to enable Chinese travelers to use its app at American retail outlets.
Marqeta and JPMorgan have also teamed up to issue virtual credit cards. The Fintech firm also joined forces with Goldman Sachs, earlier this year, in order to provide the debit cards issued by the bank’s consumer banking division.

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May 3, 2021

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The Zobel-owned Ayala Corp. (AC) furnished the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. (PDEx) the company’s declaration of cash dividends equivalent to ¼ of 5.25 percent per annum, or P6.56250 per share, based on the issue price of the preferred “B” series 1 (ACPBI) shares. The record date is Feb. 11, 2021, and payment date is Feb. 15, 2021, according to AC’s filing dated Jan. 28, 2021.
In the filing, AC also said it would distribute ¼ of 4.8214 percent per annum, or P4.8214% per annum, or P6.02675, based on the issue price if preferred “B” series 2 (APB2R) shares. The record date is Feb. 19, 2021 and payment date is Feb. 28, 2021.”
The filing did not state the number of ACPB1 and APB2R shares, although AC did the SEC, the PSE and the PDEx copies of the payments.
AC, which had Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala as chairman, and his brother Fernando as vice chairman of the seven-man board, said the company has 627,415,324 common shares; 20 million preferred B series 1 shares; 30 million preferred B series 2 shares; and 200 million voting preferred shares, according to disclosure dated Jan. 28, 2021, which Solomon M. Hermosura filed as AC’s corporate secretary.
AC peaked to a 30-day high of P849 on Dec. 16, 2020 when it opened at P847; fell to session low of P833; and closed at a 30-day and session high of P849. It fell to a 30-day low of P756 on Jan. 28, 2021 when it opened at P774; climbed to P800 and dropped to session high of P800.
* * *

Hans T. Sy, his brother Herbert and sister Elizabeth were the principal/substantial stockholders, as direct and indirect holders of 268,544,961 common shares, or 22. 294 percent of 1,204,582,867 outstanding common shares of SM Investments Corp. Of the outstanding, Hans owned 75,839,675 common shares (direct) and 22,929,461 common shares, for a total of 98,769,136 common shares, or 8.199 percent; Herbert, 98,753,008 common shares, or 8.198 percent; and Elizabeth, 71,022,817 common shares, or 5.896 percent. SM’s outstanding common shares, with P10 par value, are all listed on the PSE.
The brothers Hans, Herbert and their sister Elizabeth are not directors of SM’s eight-person board. Neither are they executives of the company.
In a 2020 general information sheet (GIS), SM also reported 1,204,582,867 outstanding common shares, the same number in its POR and PSE website. PCD Nominee Corp, was the company’s top stockholder. As the No. 1 shareholder, it held 414,314,888 SM common shares, or 34.395 percent as record holder for non-Filipinos and 161,741,117 common shares, or 13.427 percent, for Filipinos.
SM peaked at a 30-day high of P1,095 on Jan. 11, 2021 when it opened at P1,050, which was its session low, and closed at session low of P1,050. It fell to a 30-day low of P985 on Jan. 29, 2021 when it opened at P1,016; hit a session high of P1,033; and closed at 30-day and session low of P985.
* * *
In a 2020 GIS, Manila Bulletin Publishing Corp. (MB) listed 2,757 Filipino stockholders as owners of 3,466,139,072 outstanding common shares, or 57.769 percent of 6 billion authorized capital stock (ACS).
The said GIS reported US Automotive Co. Inc. as holder of 1,883,738,105 MB common shares, or 57.769 percent of outstanding, followed by US Auto Co. Inc. as owner of 811,225,930 common shares, or 13.52 percent, and Menzi Trust Find Inc. held 292,632,568 common shares, or 4.877 percent. PCD Nominee Corp, held 169,541,218 common shares, or 2.826 percent as record stockholder for Filipinos. Foreigners are not allowed to hold shares in newspapers.
This would mean of the ACS, MB had yet to issue the remaining 2,533,860,928 common shares, or 42.231 percent, according to the GIS.
Manila Bulletin peaked at a 30-day high of P0.67 on Jan. 13, 2021 when it opened at P0.455, which as its session low, and closed at P0.55. It fell to a 30-low of P0.425 on Jan. 7, 2021 when it opened at 30-day and session low; climbed to P0.430; and closed at its high of P0.430. On Jan. 8, 2021, it opened and closed at P0.430; hit a session high of P0.440 and closed at P0.430.
* * *
Teresita T. Sy is chairperson of the 11-person board of BDO Unibank Inc. (BDO stands for Banco de Oro). She increased her ownership in the bank to 506,421 common shares from 394,947 common shares after she purchased 111,474 common shares in three trading days. Her additional acquisitions were: 17,183 on Jan. 21, 2021; 91,945 on Jan. 25; and 2,346 on Jan. 26. She did not disclose the prices of her additional shares.
According to a 2020 GIS, BDO had 4,899,283,415 outstanding common and preferred shares of the bank’s 6.5 billion authorized capital stock divided into 5.5 billion common shares and 1 billion preferred shares. Both the common and preferred shares had P10 par value.
BDO peaked at a 30-day high of P115.40 on Dec. 16, 2020 when it opened at P114.50; dropped to P112.60; and finished trading at P113.50. It fell to a 30-day low of P99 on Jan. 6, 2021 when it opened at session high of P102 and closed at P99.90.
Will AC allocate some voting preferred shares for public investors? Just asking.
esdperez@gmail.

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THE Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued an advisory against JPCompany Online Shop for collecting investments from the public without registering with the regulator and without securing the proper license.
JPCompany Online Shop or JP Company is said to be headed by a certain John Paul Acuzar Chan.
The SEC noted that the entity has acquired a certificate of business name registration in January from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) under business name number 2515205.
Its DTI registration is under the name of Mr. Chan with a limited scope within Brgy. Bangkal in Makati City.
“Nonetheless, JPCompany Online Shop or JP Company is not authorized to solicit investments from the public as it did not secure prior registration and/or license to solicit investments from the commission as prescribed under Section 8 and 28 of the SRC (Securities Regulation Code),” the corporate watchdog said.
The entity is offering the public an “IWE (invest, wait, and earn)” program, which promises returns worth 180% of initial investment within 15 to 20 days.
Recruiters of JPCompany are also guaranteed a five-percent direct-referral bonus from the initial investment of their recruits.
Brokers, dealers, or those who act for the unregistered entity may be prosecuted or held liable under the securities code and may be fined for P5 million at most, face 21 years behind bars, or both.
In April, the SEC issued a total of 11 advisories against multiple entities for offering unauthorized investment schemes.
WONKACASH or WONKA CASH App Financial Consultancy Services, IX Trade, Learn and Earn Online, 247 Cryptotrading FX, 247 Cryptotrade Online, ExchangeStock, Binary Options Trading, and Wolves Options have been flagged by the commission.
It also warned the investing public against Investrade Marketing or Investrade Digital Marketing Services, iWATCH Corp., Beyond Generations Digital Marketing Services, Big Dreams International and BDI Product Trading OPC, CASH FX Group, Doors Opportunity Online or Door Opportunity Digital Marketing Services, and Infinity PAYB or PAYB BILLS Payment and Remittance Center. — Keren Concepcion G.

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Self-driving truck software startup Plus is reportedly in talks to merge with the same investor group that brought public electric vehicle startup Canoo Inc. (NASDAQ: GOEV), school bus maker Blue Bird Corp. (NASDAQ: BLBD) and flatbed logistics specialist Daseke Inc. (NASDAQ: DSKE).
Rumors of the Cupertino, California-based startup aligning with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) have circulated for months. Bloomberg reported Friday that Plus is in talks with Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V (NASDAQ: HCIC) in a deal that could be announced as soon as this week.
“We’re very open to all kinds of methods to raise capital and provide resources for further development of our technology and company,”  Plus co-founder and CEO David Liu told FreightWaves in a March interview. “We don’t comment on rumors.”
According to Bloomberg, Plus would be valued at more than $3 billion and raise $500 million to $600 million through Hennessy’s latest blank-check company, a shell that raises money from investors in an initial public offering to target a company for merger.
The latest Hennessy SPAC raised $345 million in a January IPO. More money could accumulate through a private investment in public equity (PIPE), where mutual and hedge funds purchase shares, typically priced at $10. They often receive a partial warrant for each share for later redemption at $11.50.

After a year and half in which more than 500 SPACs have launched, the Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing warrant accounting and whether financial projections should get liability protection. Traditional IPOs are prohibited from making future revenue and profit projections.

Chinese backing
Plus was founded by Liu and Stanford University classmate Shawn Kerrigan in 2016. Financial backers include Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.,GSR Ventures Management and the Chinese long-haul company Full Truck Alliance.  
Plus has raised $420 million in recent months, much of it from Chinese investors. It has a minority interest in a joint venture with Chinese-owned First Auto Works and begins production of Level 4 robot trucks in China this quarter. Each truck has a safety driver behind the wheel.
The latest $200 million funding round in February attracted new investors including Guotai Junan International Holdings and Citic Private Equity Funds Management Co. FountainVest Partners and ClearVue Partners co-led a $220 million expansion of the round in March.
Adding partners
Plus works with Chinese delivery company SF Holding Co., which uses its PlusDrive software stack on driver-monitored routes that can cover more than 900 miles a day. The company deals with four of the world’s top 10 truck makers, Liu said.
It recently signed a memorandum to work with Europe’s IVECO to equip its trucks with the PlusDrive system and is collaborating with Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) to add its software to natural gas trucks made in the Cummins Westport joint venture.
Plus is one of at least six autonomous trucking software developers jockeying to lead in the technology that could eventually remove drivers from heavy-duty trucks operating on repeatable routes or in hub-to-hub arrangement. 

Liu said that it could take billions of driver-monitored miles to assure driverless trucks are safe.
The competition
San Diego-based TuSimple Holding (NASDAQ: TSP) went public in April at a valuation of about $8 billion. Its shares have traded slightly below the $40 where they traded at their debut. 
TuSimple operates 50 Level 4 software-equipped trucks with safety drivers that haul freight in the southwest U.S. It plans a fourth-quarter driverless pilot in Arizona. The company is developing a self-driving Class 8 truck with Navistar International Corp. (NYSE: NAV) targeting deliveries in 2024.
Others competing to lead include Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Waymo Via, whose technology was adapted from the Google self-driving car project. It is developing its fifth-generation software system for Daimler Trucks (OTC: DDAIF). Aurora Innovation is working with Volvo Group (OTC: VLVLY) and PACCAR Inc. (NASDAQ: PCAR) on self-driving trucks. Startups Embark Trucks and Kodiak Robotics Inc. are deep in Level 4 technology testing and moving revenue-generating loads from Arizona to California and in Texas respectively.
Related articles:
Self-driving trucks: A 10 billion-mile proof case for Plus
TuSimple raises $1.

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WASHINGTON — California clean tech innovator Bloom Energy, with its noncombustion, low-emission fuel cells, is hardly taking the same approach to powering the planet as oil giant Chevron, but one thing the companies have in common are slick promotional campaigns defining them as environmental pioneers.
That public relations savvy, though, has lately become a liability for both firms.
As they grapple with accusations of exaggerating their place in the green economy, many other businesses are taking notice. A push by the Biden administration and the state of California could soon force all public companies to be far more forthright about their preparedness — or lack thereof — for the disruptions created by climate change and about the size of their carbon footprint.

Unlocking the black box of corporate secrecy is a central pillar of federal and state plans for confronting warming, which are increasingly focused on requiring a wide range of businesses, including financial firms, food suppliers and tech giants, to be painstakingly — perhaps uncomfortably — specific with investors and the public. Even secret contributions to advocacy and political groups could soon be forced into the daylight.
“Companies can’t say they have all these policies to reach goals and not pursue them,” said Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. “Regulators are really interested in this.”
A frenzy of activity aimed at forcing corporate climate transparency is underway at the White House, in the California Capitol in Sacramento, and across federal financial regulatory agencies. The results could be transformative, potentially mandating that companies go beyond just revealing the emissions their products create to probing their supply chains, the pollution created when their products are discarded and possibly even the carbon footprint created by day-to-day business activities such as employee travel.
The claims against Chevron and Bloom — made independent of the regulatory push — signal the kinds of pressure many more firms may soon face as transparency efforts gain momentum.
Chevron’s marketing campaigns portraying the firm as a leader in clean energy and environmental justice moved the groups Greenpeace, Earthworks and Global Witness to allege the messaging is wildly out of step with the company’s actual record, violating federal rules against “greenwashing.”
Testing the Biden administration’s resolve to demand companies step up their transparency around climate, the groups in April filed a novel complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. The oil company calls the filing frivolous, saying in a statement that it is working determinedly to “reduce the carbon intensity of our operations and assets” and “increase the use of renewables and offsets.”
Bloom also finds itself in an awkward place. A chancery judge in Delaware ordered Bloom to open some of the company’s books to an investor suspicious that the firm exaggerates how green its fuel cell technology actually is. Bloom has argued that the investor’s charges, driven by a research report from a group of short-sellers, are inaccurate and misleading. But the court was persuaded by the plaintiff’s argument that if the allegations are true, Bloom could be at risk of losing green tech subsidies crucial to the firm’s financial health.
The pressures parallel a much broader push inside the Securities and Exchange Commission — and in the governor’s office and Legislature in California — to require thousands more companies to disclose a trove of data that reveals their financial vulnerabilities to climate change and the extent to which they are contributing to it.
The disclosures would force companies to dive deep into the ways their operations are vulnerable to risks such as extreme temperatures, flooding and wildfires. And companies would need to demonstrate how they plan to keep up with the big shifts in the economy that climate change is causing, such as the electrification of cars and trucks.
“We don’t want to have an extra page or two added to the 10-K [corporate financial report] loaded with greenwash and banal statements,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Northridge) said during a recent hearing of the investor protection panel he heads for the House Financial Services Committee. “We need to define and hopefully have numerical standards, measure, tabulate. We want to change the behavior of corporations.”
The California effort, focused on companies that do business with the state, was motivated by the declaration of bankruptcy by Pacific Gas & Electric just days after Gavin Newsom was sworn in as governor in 2019. The electricity giant’s failure to upgrade its equipment to withstand extreme weather led to the wildfires that wiped out communities and killed dozens. The PG&E financial collapse was dubbed the nation’s first “climate bankruptcy.”
The company had not revealed its massive vulnerabilities in public disclosures.
“It really hit home for us then how these climate risks for the companies the state is doing business with are a big fiscal issue,” said Kate Gordon, director of the governor’s Office of Planning and Research. She said the state is working closely with the Biden administration on assessing what companies should be pushed to reveal climate data.
Though disclosure rules imposed by the Newsom administration would only apply to state contractors, they could become a template for the SEC to use for all public corporations.

“California can play a leadership role in laying down a marker,” said former state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, who sits on the state advisory panel examining the issue.
Some of the country’s most influential corporations are embracing the push. The current patchwork of largely voluntary guidelines offers little clarity on how much disclosure of climate vulnerability and action is enough. Many companies are looking for a level playing field that does not put them at risk of sharing sensitive data that competitors keep secret.
The San Francisco-based cloud computing giant Salesforce enlisted in the push as President Joe Biden launched his global climate summit in late April. “We are in a climate emergency,” Salesforce said in a statement endorsing the SEC’s transparency campaign. “There must be a globally recognized and formally governed reporting standard.”
Yet others are more reluctant, anticipating that the inside information forced out in the open by new rules will give climate activists new leverage as they target companies with charges of greenwashing and securities fraud.
Republican politicians are mobilizing to block the Biden administration’s effort. Lawmakers clashed over the issue at the recent confirmation hearing of the new SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, a proponent of pushing companies to disclose their climate risks.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania accused Gensler of seeking to use the agency’s “regulatory powers to advance a liberal social and cultural agenda on issues ranging from climate change to racial inequality.”
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is threatening to sue, accused the SEC in a March letter of “federal overreach and political activism at its worst.”
The debate has spilled over to the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is signaling that banks are going to need to take a far more proactive role in analyzing and disclosing the climate risks not just of their own operations, but of the companies they are investing in.
Its board voted unanimously in December to join the international Network for the Greening of the Financial System, which promotes aggressive action in the sector to confront global warming and move more capital toward low-carbon investment. Other than the Reserve Bank of India, every other central bank in the world had joined before the U.S.
The move nonetheless sparked protests from dozens of House Republicans. Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky wrote in an op-ed for CNBC that the move was geared toward “causing financial stress for industries that climate extremists hate.”
The transparency fight is getting underway in the U.S. as many of its allies are far ahead in requiring companies to report their climate risks. France in 2016 began mandating that its large investment firms and pension funds disclose extensive information about their exposure to global warming and plans to confront it.
In the years that followed, according to a Banque de France study, those subject to the law cut their investments in fossil fuels by 40% more than the country’s banks, which were not subject to the law.
“We can’t reach our net-zero future without climate disclosure,” said Steven Rothstein, a managing director at Ceres, the nonprofit that engages business leaders in setting and reaching sustainability goals. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
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(c)2021 the Los Angeles Times
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Peter Wolfendale is a philosopher based at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. His interests range from metaethics to artificial intelligence. He was a founding voice in one of the truly original branches of thought that found expression on the internet, left-accelerationism, as well as a pioneering figure in the blogosphere. Suffice it to say, if it’s on the cutting edge, Wolfendale has thoughts about it. CoinDesk reached out to Wolfendale for an interview about Bitcoin to ask why it’s a tool for emancipation, how it reproduces existing forms of prejudice and what it might mean for the future of capitalism. Here is what he had to say:How does your interest in philosophy intersect with Bitcoin? Related: Bitcoin’s Success Is ‘Disgusting’: Berkshire’s Charlie MungerFor the better part of the last decade, my work has been driven by the idea that philosophy of mind and philosophy of artificial intelligence are essentially the same thing: To understand what it would be to create systems that are generally intelligent and practically autonomous in the way we are is essentially to understand what we are ourselves. This intellectual journey convinced me that philosophy of computer science isn’t a niche subfield, but a lens through which the others need to be understood. Not only are individual human beings already computational, but so are the social, political and economic systems that we’ve built for and out of ourselves.It’s impossible not to be awed by the ambition of the cryptocurrency community: to reinvent money for the age of planetary-scale, distributed computation. It’s also impossible to deny that it’s made a lot of concrete progress in a short space of time. But my job is to see if they’re guided by the right abstract questions about money and similar social institutions, and to tentatively suggest some better ones.Story continuesWhat are the most exciting things happening in crypto?Related: Wall Street’s Bitcoin Isn’t Your BitcoinSome people are excited by crypto as a source of ROI (return on investment). Others are excited by it as a way of designing and implementing new sorts of social organization. These aren’t mutually exclusive, and a lot of people are motivated by both. But there’s an understandable tendency to overestimate how compatible they are, and the resulting hype can push the ecosystem in questionable directions. The obvious example here is NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which are really interesting from a technological perspective, but are caught up in exactly the wrong sort of excitement. They’re a direct demonstration that scarcity is a precarious substitute for use-value. The really exciting things are better ways to handle anonymity, decentralization and coordination. From a feature perspective, that means the spread of zero-knowledge proofs, systems optimized for dapps and multi-chain interoperability, and mature proof-of-stake protocols with on-chain governance.You’ve said in the past that bitcoin is more or less recreating existing monetary phenomena – from banks to bank fraud. Is there a way to develop an alternative monetary framework that doesn’t repeat errors or make things worse? People often say that money does three jobs: a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. Bitcoin started out as a decentralized medium of exchange, but it’s not really very good at that. Instead, it’s become popular as a store of value: not so much digital gold coins as a distributed Fort Knox. This is predicated on the belief that at some point it’ll become stable enough relative to other assets to function as a unit of account. The problem here is that it’s less about bitcoin being good at this job, than a self-fulfilling prophecy driven by network effects.Money also quantifies privilege. It gives you access to a certain share of the output of the whole system of production, a share you earn by having a stake in that system. These aren’t the only sorts of privileges that can be quantified. If you acquire shares in a company, you don’t just get dividends, you get votes. In liberal, democratic states, political control and economic activity are nominally separate, but your stake in the system as a whole gets you a non-transferable token you can spend in elections to rebalance its overhead (e.g., taxes and spending). A major reason this model is decaying is that monetary sovereignty is less and less able to manage this balance. See also: Opinion – Why Bitcoin Needs PhilosophyHow and why are matters of extreme controversy. But it’s clear to me that any improved social contract, liberal or post-liberal, will need to rethink the relationship between currency, geography and accounting. Precious metals, printing presses and TBTF (too big to fail) banks aren’t going to cut it.You’ve said “scarcity is a blunt instrument with which to build financial infrastructure.” Considering the current macroeconomic landscape of easy money and low rates, what is the alternative?The scarcity we should be interested in isn’t in the money supply, but in the output of the economy: the goods and services we consume. Are we more interested in conserving our share of this output than in the quantity, quality and sustainability of that output as a whole? The banking ecosystem is responsible for securing value in the physical and social infrastructure that lets us live our lives. It’s pretty obvious to many of us that it’s no longer doing this job well. It’s progressively geared towards creating opportunities for rent extraction and minimizing risk for protected classes of investors. There’s no real trust in these institutions, even if we’ve no choice but to rely on them. Money is power and power has a nasty tendency to ratchet itselfIf DeFi (decentralized finance) wants to be better, it needs to do more than guarantee our share of the pie will remain stable as the pie slowly rots over time.There’s not one simple trick for doing this. But here are two lines of thought riffing on existing organizational forms: We should encourage unmediated supply-demand negotiation in which consumers invest directly in products/services (i.e. crowdfunding).Where it must be mediated by institutions that generate lines of credit by minting tokens, we should develop more fine-grained ways to check their lending decisions than forking or divestment (like switching from a bank to a credit union).Tokens are more versatile than legacy units of account, and we should use them to build more decentralized and transparent successors to the fractional reserve model.Is bitcoin actually a tool for reducing inequality?Not as far as I can see. Any currency system which is optimized to fight inflation and act as a store of value is going to preserve and heighten inequalities in the long run. And this is before we talk about relative energy costs and related environmental externalities.At the end of the day, money is power, and power has a nasty tendency to ratchet itself unless it’s checked in some way. Decentralization isn’t a sufficient check all on its own.You’ve been critical of some aspects of the bitcoin worldview, which requires a high degree of individual responsibility. This is perhaps best exemplified by the phrase “be your own bank.” What are the issues of switching responsibility for personal wealth from banks to individuals, or of trust minimization across the web?The problem is that most people can’t be their own banks. One aspect of this is technical competence, which can be mitigated by better software and cultural change. The other is physical protection and insurance. Though cryptography and software verification can seriously narrow down the range of possible attack vectors on your assets, they can’t eliminate them entirely. Anonymity helps, but only so much. We’re social creatures, after all.The old adage that crypto is a playground for market-oriented libertarians has been challenged by the recent bout of conservative corporations (like insurers) and Wall Street giants buying up bitcoin. How will this trend play out? Will there be room for cypherpunks in 10 years?Honestly, it’s hard to say. But the two types of excitement I talked about earlier are going to increasingly pull apart, and this is going to feed into a much wider debate about cypher-politics. Current arguments are split between three camps: 1) the market is good, and big business can be trusted with your data (cypher-capitalists); 2) big business can’t be trusted with your data, but big government can be (cypher-liberals and cypher-tankies); and 3) neither of them can be trusted with your data, and it’s up to you to find the tools needed to protect your own privacy (cypherpunks).I think what may be missing is a model of government that, rather than protecting your privacy by monopolizing your data, protects your privacy by providing the tools and infrastructure for you to do so yourself (cypher-socialism). For example, keeping track of your own purchasing history and media selections and running recommendation algorithms yourself, rather than depending on Amazon or Spotify.

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The Federal Government has announced that it will bar passengers who have visited India, Brazil and Turkey in the past 14 days from entering the country.
This is part of precautionary measures introduced by the government to reduce the risk of a spike in Covid-19 infections due to travellers coming from other countries as concerns over the new wave of coronavirus disease in some parts of the world continues to mount.

This new travel advisory which is subject to review after an initial period of 4 weeks, will take effect from Tuesday, May 4, 2021.
This disclosure is contained in a statement titled, “Travel Advisory For Passengers Arriving Nigeria From Brazil, India and Turkey,’’ issued by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation who also doubles as the Chairman Presidential Task Force (PTF) on Covid-19, Boss Mustapha, over the weekend.
The Federal Government in its statement threatened to impose a fine of $3,500 per passenger on any airline that fails to adhere to these instructions in order to ensure airlines take these new guidelines seriously.
Also, as part of the new regime of Covid-19 prevention measures, the federal government has reduced the validity period of the pre-boarding COVID-19 PCR test for all Nigeria-bound passengers from 96 hours to 72 hours. This means that PCR test results older than 72hours before departure shall not be accepted.

The statement from Mustapha reads, “The Government of Nigeria deeply empathises with the citizens and governments of these countries, and assures them of our commitment, unflinching support and solidarity at this time of need.
In our effort to continue to safeguard the health of the Nigerian population, as well as to minimize the risk of a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria, the Presidential Steering Committee carried out a risk assessment of countries with high incidence of cases. The risk assessment took into consideration the epidemiology of cases, prevalence of variants of concern and average passenger volume between Nigeria and each country amongst other indicators.

Of the countries assessed, this interim travel advisory applies to three (3) countries in the first instance. These precautionary measures are a necessary step to minimize the risk of a surge in COVID-19 cases introduced to Nigeria from other countries, while national response activities continue.’’

Insisting Nigerians are strongly advised to avoid any non-essential international travels to any country at this period and specifically to countries that are showing a rising number of cases and deaths, Mustapha however listed the new travel guides, with specific reference to India, Brazil and Turkey.

He said, “Any person who has visited Brazil, India or Turkey within fourteen (14) days preceding travel to Nigeria, shall be denied entry into Nigeria. This regulation, however, does not apply to passengers who transited through these countries.

The following measures shall apply to airlines and passengers who fail to comply with I and II(a) above: Airlines shall mandatorily pay a penalty of $3,500 (Three Thousand Five Hundred dollars) for each defaulting passenger. Non-Nigerians will be denied entry and returned to the country of embarkation at the cost to the Airline.
Nigerians and those with the permanent resident permit shall undergo seven (7) days of mandatory quarantine in a Government approved facility at the point-of-entry city and at a cost to the passenger. The following condition shall apply to such passengers:

Within 24 hours of arrival shall take a COVID-19 PCR test.

“If positive, the passenger shall be admitted within a government-approved treatment centre, in line with National treatment protocols. If negative, the Passenger shall continue to remain in quarantine and made to undergo a repeat PCR test on day 7 of their quarantine.
Passenger(s) arriving in Nigeria from other destinations must observe a 7-day self-isolation at their final destination; Carry out a COVID-19 PCR test on day 7 at the selected laboratory; Shall be monitored for compliance to isolation protocol by appropriate authorities.”

On false declaration, the federal government said, “Passenger(s) who provided false or misleading contact information will be liable to prosecution. Person(s) who willfully disregard or refuse to comply with directions of Port-Health staff, security agencies or evade quarantine shall be prosecuted in accordance with the law.
State Governments are required to ensure that all returning travellers from ALL countries are monitored to ensure adherence to the mandatory seven-day self-isolation period and the repeat COVID-19 PCR test on the seventh day after arrival.”

Bottom Line

These measures being introduced by the Federal Government are geared towards containing the spread of the coronavirus disease across the country, especially at this time when there is an increase in the number of cases in the countries mentioned especially India, which has witnessed a significant increase in COVID-19 cases in recent times.

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