TAIPAN John Gokongwei may be semi-retired, and his younger brother and successor, James, may be keeping himself below the media radar, but that does not stop the brothers from stirring things up in the Singapore bourse and even the Lion City?s tame media.

The Singapore business press were full of stories yesterday about the chairman of United Overseas Bank, Wee Cho Yaw, making a tender offer on United Industrial Corp., which controls Singapore Land, the city state?s version of Ayala Land.

Wee, who is also UIC chairman, has apparently been alarmed that the stake of his Filipino partners in UIC has already crept up to 35.05 percent last month, from a little over 30 percent only three years ago.

Despite heading of the most valuable property holding company in Singapore, the Singaporean Wee has belatedly been playing catch-up with the Gokongweis ever since the latter acquired their UIC foothold from the Salim Group.

According to the grapevine, the present tender offer was triggered after Wee?s stake reached the 30-percent mark, a point that Gokongwei reached in late 2005.

But like Gokongwei?s earlier tender offer, Wee?s 9.1-percent premium over the last traded price apparently also underwhelms the market, based on initial reports.

Even then, assuming that there would also be no takers in the latest tender offer, Wee may now also play the same creeping takeover game that Gokongwei has been playing the past three years.

There is apparently a little-known rule in the Singapore stock exchange that allows a shareholder, after making a failed tender offer, to accumulate up to 1 percent of the company stock every six months, a loophole that the Filipino taipan has exploited since his failed 2005 bid.

?We see this as a long, drawn-out chess game for control of UIC and Singapore Land between the families of John Gokongwei and Wee Cho Yaw,? Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts Paul Lian and Natasha Parchani were quoted by Bloomberg as saying yesterday. ?We don?t expect a competitive response unless there is reasonable confidence of a significant majority accumulation.?

UIC?s main asset is its 72.4 percent stake in another listed company called Singapore Land, which owns various office and retail properties in the Lion State, including the high-end Marina Square shopping mall.

Heard through the grapevine

Lawyer Jose ?Bong? Bernas, brother of Luli Arroyo?s husband Luigi, has agreed to represent beleaguered Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zu?o against the drug bribery allegations to be investigated by a special panel created by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez.

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