Ceres to sue ex-finance chief over P380-M debt
Credit to Author: JIM PILAPIL| Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 17:42:00 +0000
IN an unprecedented move, the board of directors of Vallacar Transit Inc. (VTI), the country’s biggest transport firm, has passed a resolution to file a legal action against its former finance chief for her failure to explain the staggering P380-million debt of the company.
The August 19 resolution directed the company’s lawyers to demand from Ma. Lourdes Celina Yanson Lopez to account for the huge debt.
Lopez incidentally is a member of the Yanson family that owns VTI, more popularly known to its thousands of commuters as Ceres Liner that plies the Visayas and Mindanao routes.
Lourdes Celina is the daughter of the Yanson matriarch Olivia Yanson and the late patriarch Ricardo Yanson Jr.
The P380-million debt was based on the audit conducted by SGV accountants, and on the results of the cash, property and asset inventory audit of the documents including those from the Main Office and South Terminal in Bacolod City, Lawyer Jun Maxell Orlina said.
In a special stockholders meeting at the company’s main office in Bacolod City, the stockholders elected Leo Rey Yanson, Olivia Yanson, Ginnette Dumancas and Charles Dumancas as members of the board of directors, according to Orlina.
With the new directors now in place, the board held a reorganizational meeting and reelected Leo Rey as president of the company.
Also elected were Charles as vice president, Ginnette as treasurer and Olivia as corporate secretary.
Vallacar Transit is the largest subsidiary of the Yanson Group of Bus Companies and is the company behind the popular Ceres Liner and Sugbo Transit.
The Yanson Group is one of the largest bus conglomerates in Southeast Asia, operating more than 4,000 buses nationwide.
Established in 1968, the 52-year-old conglomerate founded by Ricardo Yanson Sr., now has 18,000 employees, serving 700,000 passengers daily.
It has 15 bases of operations in the cities of Bacolod, Iloilo, Dumaguete, Cebu, Cagayan De Oro, Butuan, Davao, Pagadian, Dipolog, Bohol and Batangas.
A boardroom battle occurred on July 7, 2019 when four Yanson siblings, in a purported special board meeting, unceremoniously unseated Leo Rey as president of VTI. Leo Rey was subsequently replaced by his eldest brother Roy Yanson.
But the special stockholders meeting on August 19 effectively reaffirmed Leo Rey as the rightful president of VTI.
Hence, the reorganization and the drastic move to put order to the company finances.