Nenaco takes legal action against United Filipino Seafarers

Negros Navigation Co. (Nenaco), the shipping subsidiary of Metro Pacific Corp., initiated yesterday the first step in legal proceedings against United Filipino Seafarers Inc. (UFS), a group which has in recent weeks sought to destroy the public reputation of one of the Philippines’ leading passage and cargo shipping companies.

Nenaco formally presented yesterday a "demand letter" to UFS in response to the "patently untrue, grossly unfounded, blatantly malicious, highly irresponsible and scurrilous" acusations which UFS made against Nenaco via a paid newspaper advertisement on Feb. 13, 2003. In that advertisement, UFS made a variety of wild and false accusations regarding the management of Nenaco, the status of Nenaco’s supplier and credit relationships, and sought to destroy in the public’s mind, the reputation of its business.

"We announced in our response to UFS’ advertisement that we would fight back and fight hard against those who seek to destroy the tremendous gains Nenaco has realized in the past two years. Today marks the first legal step towards that and should UFS fail to respond via a national apology, we intend to exercise our full rights under the law to protect the sanctity of our business," said Conrado A. Carballo, Nenaco president and general manager.

In less than two years, Nenaco has achieved a near complete turnaround of its passage and freight business and expects to report a net profit of approximately P100 million when it reports its audited financial results for 2002 next month.

Nenaco’s turnaround is due to the complete restructuring of its business operations, the implementation of strict, international-standard financial controls, aggressive reduction of costs, realignment of its vessels to support high-traffic routes, and the significant improvement of its services to passage and freight customers.