ABS-CBN to Maintain Largely Unchanged Board Amid Shareholder Meeting

MANILA, Philippines — Media giant ABS-CBN Corp. is heading into its long-delayed annual stockholders’ meeting on August 19 with a board slate that remains largely unchanged, adding only two nominees. A Friday filing revealed that independent director Randolf David and University of the Philippines economist Emmanuel de Dios will step down from the board. David advised the board from 2011 to 2021, while De Dios served as an independent director before becoming an adviser in 2023. Replacing them as independent directors will be Ma. Rosario “Charo” Santos-Concio, a former ABS-CBN president and CEO who is now an executive consultant, and Monico Jacob, president and CEO of STI Education Systems Holdings Inc. Santos-Concio led ABS-CBN from 2013 to 2015 and has been an executive consultant since 2016. Jacob previously headed Petron Corp. and the Philippine National Oil Company. The rest of the board remains largely intact, including chair Martin Lopez, president and CEO Carlo Katigbak, First Philippine Holdings chair and CEO Federico “Piki” Lopez, former ABS-CBN Global COO Rafael Lopez, and Navegar managing partner Honorio Poblador IV. ABS-CBN had initially moved its meeting to July 24 amid a dispute within the Lopez family involving Piki Lopez and top executives, before resetting it to August 19. In a May complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Piki Lopez accused management of “systematic fraud, misrepresentation” and the “unabated dissipation” of assets. The company stated it does not wish to be drawn further into “a fight that is not even ours to begin with” and commented that the “public accusations are painful distractions that take time and resources away from what is truly important to us.”