IF you are planning a career in banking, the Zobels? Bank of the Philippine Islands seems to be a good choice in good times or bad.

Despite the bank?s net income for 2008 plunging by 35 percent, president Aurelio Montinola III and nine other top officers still expect this year to receive nearly 4.4 percent increase in their pay checks.

BPI has just reported its 2008 income dropping to P6.557 billion from a record P10.226 billion in 2008. For BPI shareholders, the numbers translate to P1.98 earnings for every share held, sharply down from 2008?s EPS of P3.09.

Just like their counterparts at Ayala Land?despite the major economic indicators all going downhill from the third quarter onwards, Ayala Land actually posted its best earnings last year?the Montinola team of 10 will see their combined pay envelopes rise this year to an estimated P191.82 million from P183.77 million last year.

The BPI board, in the meantime, is also proposing an adjustment?not clear if upwards or downwards?for their 2008 bonus.

?The directors? bonus to be proposed to the stockholders during the annual meeting on March 31, 2009 is a different item from last year?s directors? bonus taken up and approved during the 2008 stockholders? meeting,? BPI said in a communication to the shareholders.

For the past two years, the 15 directors led by chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II received a total of P18 million in bonuses each year, or a modest P1.2 million for each director annually.

BPI?s formula to compute the yearly board gifts? About 0.35 percent of the bank?s net income for the past 10 years.

Money-go-round

? Del Monte Philippines took the unprecedented step of issuing a news release to denounce the shakedown threat it said it had received from an ABS-CBN employee and his PR partner.

The ABS-CBN employee apparently did not know that Del Monte?s president, Luis Alejandro, was a former ABS-CBN president.

? The pre-martial law activists running the grant-dependent Newsbreak magazine have just received another funding boost from the US Department of State.

Heard through the grapevine

Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II turns golden boy today, and is celebrating his half a century of multi-billion fortunes and good genes in a dinner with select friends at a Makati warehouse-turned-art gallery.

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)