Villar Land Faces SEC Scrutiny Over $24 Billion Property Valuation
Manuel Villar, chairman of Villar Land.
Courtesy of Vista Land
Property tycoon Manuel Villar‘s listed flagship Villar Land (formerly Golden MV Holdings) drew attention this week when a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) order revealed that its external auditor, Punongbayan & Araullo (an affiliate of Grant Thornton), disputes the company’s 1.3-trillion-peso ($24 billion) valuation of a property it owns. The auditor requested another expert appraisal. The SEC launched an investigation after Villar Land delayed filing its annual audited financial statements for 2024,prompting the order.
Villar Land reported a net profit of nearly one trillion pesos for 2024 in an unaudited financial report released in March (after accounting for a 334-billion-peso deferred tax liability). This represents a 666% increase from the 1.5 billion pesos net profit reported the previous year. The company attributes this surge to a 1.3-trillion-peso revaluation gain following an appraisal of a 366-hectare land parcel purchased from Villar’s privately held companies last October for 5.2 billion pesos.
The SEC penalized Villar Land, Villar, its directors (including his children Paolo, mark, and Camille), and key executives wiht a combined 12 million pesos for approving and releasing unaudited financial statements in march before the auditor verified the property valuation acquired from Villar’s companies.
“There’s reason to find them administratively liable for gross negligence or bad faith [for] causing the release of public disclosure that is apparently false, inaccurate or misleading,” the SEC stated in its order.
since the land acquisition announcement in october, shares of Villar Land have…