ABS-CBN makes room for new owners

Hours after a quiet annual meeting, ABS-CBN moved to triple its authorized capital and expand its board. The P6-billion rescue brings money without more debt, but at the price of diluting the owners already there. The new investors were nowhere in sight when ABS-CBN Corp. held its virtual annual stockholders’ meeting Wednesday morning, August 19. By afternoon, the company had started making room for them. Hours after stockholders elected a 7-member board and adjourned an annual meeting whose agenda had been set before ABS-CBN’s P6-billion rescue was signed, the newly organized board proposed adding two more chairs around its own table. It also approved tripling the company’s authorized capital, creating enough shares for the investors putting fresh money into the wounded media company. Sto